been dressed. He remembered everything about her with extraordinary
vividness, from the crown of her glowing hair to her twinkling feet,
in brown shoes with steel or silver buckles; but he could not
instantly see her garments. Then they came back to him--the
rose-coloured jumper and the short, silvery skirts.

Twice afterward, during the evening hour, Brendon again tramped to
Foggintor, but he was not rewarded by any glimpse of the girl; but
as the picture of her dimmed a little, there happened a strange and
apparently terrible thing, and in common with everybody else his
thoughts were distracted. To the detective's hearty annoyance and
much against his will, there confronted him a professional problem.
Though the sudden whisper of murder that winged with amazing speed
through that little, uplifted church-town was no affair of his,
there fell out an incident which quickly promised to draw him into
it and end his holiday before the time.

Four evenings after his first fishing expedition to the quarries, he
devoted a morning to the lower waters of the Meavy River; at the end
of that day, not far short of midnight, when glasses were empty and
pipes knocked out, half a dozen men, just about to retire, heard a
sudden and evil report.

Will Blake, "Boots" at the Duchy Hotel, was waiting to extinguish
the lights, and seeing Brendon he said:

"There's something in your line happened, master, by the look of it.
A pretty bobbery to-morrow."

"A convict escaped, Will?" asked the detective, yawning and longing