It was nearly eleven o’clock when the Professor saw the lights of the village in the distance, and, leaving the railway line, found the lane which led homewards. The sound of his footsteps reechoed among the silent houses, the whole place breathed an atmosphere of perfect peace and tranquillity. His recent adventure seemed to the Professor as an impossible dream, a trick of his mind, so long concentrated upon the subject. So strong was the illusion of unreality that the Professor was impelled to feel the hard outline of the counter hidden in the folds of his handkerchief. There had been something theatrical about the whole adventure; the time, the place, the man’s appearance, his voice, so curiously harsh and rasping, his very words, so utterly at variance with his character of a rough sailor. With something of a shock the Professor remembered that Copperdock had claimed to have seen him at a moment when it was proved that there was no one there. Was it dimly possible that there was something supernatural about the affair? The Professor brushed the suggestion aside as absurd.