'
"'Where's the guesswork?' he demanded fiercely. 'Cast here, in this
awful loneliness--' I saw him look around on sea and cliff with a
shiver.
"'He had the dog,' said I. 'You find Rover here a companion, don't
you? I had a notion, Farrell, that you were fond of dogs. . . . I
used to be.'
"We downed sail hereabouts, and pulled in for the cleft and the
anchorage we called home. The sea under the smoothing land-wind ran
through the passage as calmly as through a miller's leat: and I will
own it was happier to be by that shore where my cross still stood
over Santa than by the other, where that other body lay, face-down,
with the weight whipped to its ankle. "'Wonder who he was?' said
Farrell late that evening, as we parted to go to our quarters.
'A missionary, I shouldn't be surprised.'
"'If so,' said I, 'he tumbled on a sinecure. Since your mind runs on
him and you want to sleep, make it out that he was a bishop, and
home-sickened for the Athenaeum.'"
"I'm coming to the end, Roddy; and you shall have it sharp and quick,
as it happened. .
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