“That is to show them the way in at night, isn’t it?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Yes,” she told him.  “Mr. Fentolin had it placed there.  And yet,” she went on, “curiously enough, since it was erected, there have been more wrecks than ever.”

“It doesn’t seem a dangerous beach,” he remarked.

She pointed to a spot about fifty yards from the Tower.  It was the spot to which the woman whom he had met on the day of his arrival had pointed.

“You can’t see them,” she said; “they are always out of sight, even when the tide is at the lowest—­but there are some hideous sunken rocks there.  ‘The Daggers,’ they call them.  One or two fishing boats have been lost on them, trying to make the village.  When Mr. Fentolin put up the lamp, every one thought that it would be quite safe to try and get in at night.  This winter, though, there have been three wrecks which no one could understand.  It must be something in the currents, or a sort of optical illusion, because in the last shipwreck one man was saved, and he swore that at the time they struck the rock, they were headed straight for the light.”

They had reached the Tower now.  Hamel became a little absorbed.  They walked around it, and he tried the front door.  He found, as he had expected, that it opened readily.  He looked around him for several moments.

“Your uncle has been here this morning,” he remarked quietly.

“Very likely.”

“That outhouse,” he continued, “must be quite a large place.  Have you any idea what it is he works upon there?”

“None,” she answered.

He looked around him once more.

“Mr. Fentolin has been preparing for my coming,” he observed.  “I see that he has moved a few of his personal things.”

She made no reply, only she shivered a little as she stepped back into the sunshine.

“I don’t believe you like my little domicile,” he remarked, as they started off homeward.

“I don’t,” she admitted curtly.

“In the train,” he reminded her, “you seemed rather to discourage my coming here.  Yet last night, after dinner—­”

“I was wrong,” she interrupted.  “I should have said nothing, and yet I couldn’t help it.  I don’t suppose it will make any difference.”

“Make any difference to what?”

“I cannot tell you,” she confessed.  “Only I have a strange antipathy to the place.  I don’t like it.  My uncle sometimes shuts himself up here for quite a long time.  We have an idea, Gerald and I, that things happen here sometimes which no one knows of.  When he comes back, he is moody and ill-tempered, or else half mad with excitement.  He isn’t always the amiable creature whom you have met.  He has the face of an angel, but there are times—­”

“Well, don’t let’s talk about him,” Hamel begged, as her voice faltered.  “Now that I am going to stay in the neighbourhood for a few days, you must please remember that it is partly your responsibility.  You are not going to shut yourself up, are you?  You’ll come and play golf again?”