Peter wheeled his huge frame round in a moment.

“What do you mean, man?” he demanded, in a voice that seemed to come from his feet.

Mesurier’s face was devoid of expression, as he replied, “Nothing, to be sure.  Of course Louise will be going to the shop now and again.”

Peter laid his hand, like a lion’s paw, on Mesurier’s shoulder, as if he would rend the truth out of him.

“And what’s the matter with her going to the shop?” said Peter, so rapidly and thickly as to be hardly articulate.

“None that I know of,” said the other uneasily, shrugging off Peter’s hand, with an attempted laugh.

“Now you understand,” said Peter, with blazing eyes, “you’ve either got to swear that you’ve heard nothing at all about Louise which you oughtn’t to have heard, or else you’ll tell me who said it, and let him know he’s got me to reckon with,” and Peter clenched his fist in a way that would have made most people swear whatever he might have happened to wish.

“Well, mate,” said the other man.  “You go and see Jean, and ask him what company he’s had of late.”  Then seeing Peter’s face becoming livid, he added briefly, “There’s been a queer-looking fish staying with him the last three weeks—­walks all on one side—­and Louise was talking to him t’other evening under the church wall.  ’Twas my wife saw her.  That’s the truth.  Nobody else has said nought about her.”

Peter swung round without a word, and marched off in the direction of the village.  Mesurier watched him a moment, then called after him, “I say, mate! mind what you’re doing:  the man’s a poor blighted creature, more like a monkey than a Christian.”

Peter said something in his throat while he handed the crabs to Mesurier:  his hand shook so violently as he did so that the basket nearly fell to the ground.  Then he strode on again.  Mesurier had glanced at his face, and did not follow.

It took Peter less than an hour, at the pace at which he was walking, to reach the next village along the coast where Jean lived.  The mellow afternoon sunshine was lighting up the cottage wall, and the long strip of gaily flowering garden, as he approached.  He entered the front room, which was fitted up as a sort of shop, in which fishermen’s requisites were sold.  There was no one there.  He pushed the door open into the inner room:  it was also empty.  He felt as if he could not breathe within the cottage walls, and went out again.  The cliff overhung the sea a few yards in front of the cottage.  He went to the edge and was scanning the shore for a sign of Jean, when below, on a narrow, zigzag path which led down the cliff to the beach, he perceived his wife.  She stood at a turn in the path, looking downwards.  There was something about her that to Peter made her seem different from what she had ever seemed before.  He looked at Louise, and he saw a woman with a shadow of guilt upon her.  The path below her was concealed from Peter’s