I wish he'd be content with his cows and sheep." Mrs Shackle drew back as she said this, the door closed, and Archy sprang up, darted out of the gateway, and hurried along the path as fast as the darkness would allow, stopping from time to time to listen.
For a long time he could hear nothing.

He was descending the slope toward the road leading to the cove, as far as he could tell, for it seemed to him likely that the farmer and his son had gone in that direction; but as he went on and on, and was unable to detect a sound, he felt that he must be wrong, and stopped short, listening intently.
"Bother the woman!" he thought; "it's all through her.

They'll go and get all the cargo from the hiding-place, and take it somewhere, and I shall know nothing." He bit his lip with disappointment, and gave an angry stamp on the grass.
"I'll go back, and try some other way." Easy to determine, but hard to carry out in the darkness, and in a place which seemed quite changed at night.

There should be a lane or track leading down to the cliff he knew, but where it was he could not say; in fact, at that moment, in his confusion, he could hardly tell for certain that he was on the road leading right away to the cove.
"I may just as well be moving," he said at last despondently.

"Oh, if I could only have followed them up!" His heart gave a bound just then, for plainly on the night air came a dull sound, as of footsteps on grass.