In the Service he was regarded as a humanly perfect mechanism, a bit of machinery that never failed, the dreaded Nemesis to be set on the trail of a wrong-doer when all others had failed.
But this morning, with every bone and muscle in him aching from his long night of tedious exertion, the chuckle grew into a laugh as he looked upon the telltale signs in the sand.
He stretched himself and his tired bones cracked.
Breault did not think aloud.

But he was saying to himself.
"There, against that rock, Jolly Roger McKay sat There is the imprint of only one person sitting.

The girl was in his arms.

Here are little holes where her outstretched heels rested in the sand.

She is wearing shoes and not moccasins." He grinned as he drew his service pack from the two-log cedar raft.
"Plenty of time now," he continued to think.