' He was dressed in what
appeared to be a dark cloth jacket, duck trousers of sea-going cut,
and a tarpaulin hat. 'There was just moon enough,' said the
ferry-man, 'to let a man take notice of his trousers, they being
white; and maybe I took particular notice of his legs, because they
were dripping wet. As for his face, by the glimpse I had of it he
was a middle-aged man that had seen trouble.' I asked if he would
know the man again. He said, 'Yes,' he was pretty sure he would.
So there, Lydia, you have the villain dogging Coffin, tracking him to
Percuil, and shamming drunk to get carried over the ferry in pursuit.
On Bogue's testimony he was as sober as a judge at St. Mawes, and
drank but one glass of grog there, and from St. Mawes to Percuil is
but a step, mainly by footpath over the fields, with no public-house
on the way."
"H'm," said Miss Belcher; "and yet he couldn't have been following
the man to murder him, or he must have taken more care to cover up
his traces. All his concern seems to have been to follow Coffin
without being seen by him. Is that all?"
"My dear Lydia, consider the amount of time I've had! Almost before
I'd finished with Bogue, and certainly before the filly was well
rested, Mr.
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