"Be dashed and damned to you!" I growled.

The old boy started perceptibly, and in rather an eager voice he asked,

"Have you got a wax match, mister?"

"Wax match? No, and be confounded!" said I.

For the next quarter of a mile or so I felt too ashamed of myself and too
contrite to think much about what the old fellow had said, and then
suddenly it began to strike me that a _wax_ match was rather a curious
thing to ask for. A match was natural enough, but why need it be wax?

And then I stopped, wheeled round, and walked back. I told myself that I
was growing absurd and getting passwords on the brain. Still, there
seemed no harm in exchanging a few more remarks with the old man.

But when I reached the same spot on the road he was gone. There were one
or two small houses not far away and it was quite possible he had
reached them by now, especially if he wanted his match badly; though it
would mean moving a little faster than I had given him credit for. Or he
might be lying down out of sight having a nap, and as the day was warm
and he had apparently nothing better to do, that seemed a very possible
solution. Anyhow, there was no sign of him, and if there had been, I
told myself he would probably have proved to be merely the island
patriarch with a senile fancy for wax vestas, so I resumed my journey to
the "big house."

As I topped another rise I got the best view I had yet seen of the lie of
the island. A group of larger buildings on another hillock, still well