confidentially, " there's nothing in the letter against
your letting out the secret afterwards. I'll
hang about in the fir plantation, and wait till
you pick me up. Don't be longer than you can
help, sir. The detective-fever isn't an easy
disease to deal with, under these circumstances."

With that parting caution, he left me.

The interval of expectation, short as it was
when reckoned by the measure of time,
assumed formidable proportions when reckoned
by the measure of suspense. This was one of
the occasions on which the invaluable habit of
smoking becomes especially precious and
consolatory. I lit a cigar, and sat down on the
slope of the beach.

The sunlight poured its unclouded beauty on
every object that I could see. The exquisite
freshness of the air made the mere act of living
and breathing a luxury. Even the lonely little
bay welcomed the morning with a show of
cheerfulness; and the bared wet surface of the
quicksand itself, glittering with a golden brightness,
hid the horror of its false brown face under
a passing smile. It was the finest day I had
seen since my return to England.

The turn of the tide came, before my cigar
was finished. I saw the preliminary heaving of
the Sand, and then the awful shiver that crept
over its surface—as if some spirit of terror
lived and moved and shuddered in the fathomless
deeps beneath. I threw away my cigar,
and went back again to the rocks.

My directions in the memorandum instructed
me to feel along the line traced by the stick,
beginning with the end which was nearest to the
beacon.

I advanced, in this manner, more than half
way along the stick, without encountering
anything but the edges of the rocks. An inch or
two further on, however, my patience was
rewarded. In a narrow little fissure, just within
reach of my forefinger, I felt the chain.
Attempting, next, to follow it, by touch, in the
direction of the quicksand, I found my progress
stopped by a thick growth of seaweed—which
had fastened itself into the fissure, no doubt, in
the lime that had elapsed since Rosanna Spearman
had chosen her hiding-place.

It was equally impossible to pull up the
seaweed, or to force my hand through it. After
marking the spot indicated by the end of the
stick which was placed nearest to the quicksand,
I determined to pursue the search for the
chain on a plan of my own. My idea was to
"sound" immediately under the rocks, on the
chance of recovering the lost trace of the chain
at the point at which it entered the sand. I
took up the stick, and knelt down on the
northern brink of the South Spit.

In this position, my face was within a few
feet of the surface of the quicksand. The sight
of it so near me, still disturbed at intervals by
its hideous shivering fit, shook my nerves for
the moment. A horrible fancy that the dead
woman might appear on the scene of her suicide,
to assist my search —an unutterable dread of
seeing her rise through the heaving surface of
the sand, and point to the place— forced itself
into my mind, and turned me cold in the warm
sunlight. I own I closed my eyes at the
moment when the point of the stick first
entered the quicksand.

The instant afterwards, before the stick could
have been submerged more than a few inches,
I was free from the hold of my own superstitious
terror, and was throbbing with excitement from
head to foot. Sounding blindfold, at my first
attempt —at that first attempt I had sounded
right! The stick struck the chain.

Taking a firm hold of the roots of the
seaweed with my left hand, I laid myself down
over the brink, and felt with my right hand
under the overhanging edges of the rock. My
right hand found the chain.

I drew it up without the slightest difficulty.
And there was the japanned tin case fastened
to the end of it.

The action of the water had so rusted the
chain, that it was impossible for me to unfasten
it from the hasp which attached it to the case.
Putting the case between my knees, and exerting
my utmost strength, I contrived to draw off
the cover. Some white substance filled the
whole interior when I looked in. I put in my
hand, and found it to be linen.

In drawing out the linen, I also drew out a
letter crumpled up with it. After looking at
the direction, and discovering that it bore my
name, I put the letter in my pocket, and
completely removed the linen. It came out in a
thick roll, moulded, of course, to the shape of
the case in which it had been so long confined,
and perfectly preserved from any injury by the
sea.

I carried the linen to the dry sand of the
beach, and there unrolled and smoothed it out.
There was no mistaking it as an article of dress.
It was a nightgown.

The uppermost side, when I spread it out,
presented to view innumerable folds and creases,
and nothing more. I tried the undermost side,
next—and instantly discovered the smear of the
paint from the door of Rachel's boudoir!

My eyes remained rivetted on the stain, and
my mind took me back at a leap from present
to past. The very words of Sergeant Cuff
recurred to me, as if the man himself was at my
side again, pointing to the unanswerable
inference which he drew from the smear on the
door.

"Find out whether there is any article of
dress in this house with the stain of the paint
on it. Find out who that dress belongs to.
Find out how the person can account for having
been in the room, and smeared the paint,
between midnight and three in the morning. If
the person can't satisfy you, you havn't far to
look for the hand that took the Diamond."

One after another those words travelled over
my memory, repeating themselves again and
again with a wearisome, mechanical reiteration.
I was roused from what felt like a trance of
many hours—- from, what was really, no doubt,
the pause of a few moments only—- by a voice