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Dr. Graves apparently expected to die a bachelor. By the time I arrived in the neighborhood, he had become quite prosperous and was well-known in his profession. In fact, it was rumored a knighthood was in the offing, in recognition of his having cured one of the King’s horrible sons of a severe stammer.
    â€œWell, sir, only a month or two after we had met, as he was returning from the bedside of a patient on a night much like this, his chaise overturned and pinned him under it. By morning, he was paralyzed below the waist.
    â€œAs his recovery was prolonged as well as incomplete, several ladies of the neighborhood took it upon themselves to nurse him in turn. Miss Eleanor Swan, as she was then, was one of them. Her all-round competence evidently attracted the old gentleman sufficiently for him to ask her for her hand. They were married from St. Ninian’s two years ago August.
    â€œAnd that, sir, is the ‘happy issue out of all their afflictions’ for which we should all pray of a Sunday,” he concluded.
    â€œCan you conceive what Mrs. Graves’ attackers might have been about?” Hoare asked.
    Mr. Morrow shrugged elaborately, almost like a Frenchman. “I should suppose it was a chance encounter, sir,” he said, “and the two saw what they conceived to be an opportunity to rob a woman alone, and perhaps to ravish her. What else?
    â€œMrs. Graves is a woman of talent, as you saw this evening, but inclined, perhaps, to an unwomanly rashness of behavior. Dr. Graves should have forbidden her to go onto the beach without so much as a manservant to protect her.”
    Privately, Hoare doubted Mrs. Graves would have been so pliant as to obey any strictures by another—even her husband—on her freedom of movement. But he did not express his doubts to Mr. Morrow.
    â€œYou journeyed to Weymouth in your own vessel,” Morrow said. “You are a yachtsman as well as a sailor, then?”
    â€œHardly a ‘yachtsman,’ Mr. Morrow. And my ‘yacht’ is a mere made-over pinnace with no pretensions except whatever name I choose for her from time to time.”
    Morrow laughed. “Yes. I hear that in that respect she is as much of a chameleon as she is a pinnace. Inevitable, is she not?”
    â€œNot today, sir. Today she is Inconceivable. ”
    Morrow laughed again. “Did you know I happen to be something of a yachtsman myself?” he said.
    Hoare expressed silent surprise.
    â€œYes. I took it up back in the land of my birth, when I found it convenient to have my own transportation ready to hand for travel between Montreal and Quebec, and up and down the tributaries of the Saint Lawrence, in my fur trading. Now I keep a handy schooner, Marie Claire, here in Weymouth and take her out from time to time when so moved. Her crew are all Jerseymen, and exempt from the press, thanks to the protections Sir Thomas has procured for them.
    â€œPerhaps we should match our craft one day soon. A few guineas on the race?”
    â€œOne day, with pleasure, sir,” Hoare said.
    Upon this, the two parted for the night.
    *   *   *
    L EAVING D R . G RAVES’S borrowed breeches in the care of the landlord at the Dish of Sprats, Hoare set forth down the High Street in the dawn mist to embark for Portsmouth. The town was in great disarray, with heaps of neglected bricks, Portland stone, and lumber scattered throughout its narrow streets. The King’s unheralded decision several years before to make Weymouth his preferred watering place may have thrown the townspeople into confusion but, determined to make the most of it, they had begun a frenzy of speculative building. But His Majesty had apparently dropped Weymouth from his increasingly confused mind, and much of the promising civic beautification had stopped in midproject.
    An addicted snoop, Hoare wondered about Mrs. Graves’s victim. It was a curious chance, he thought, that the dead