"Yes," he answered. "I cannot tell how, but as you put it I seem to see it all."

She glanced at him with a quick, grateful smile. "Well, that is just how it happened, and if I were to explain and explain I couldn't make it any clearer. You understand, too, there was never any question of my leaving Ruth until she was grown a woman and could see with a woman's eyes. Then I knew she was safe. She had more common-sense even than I. She was born to marry—I never doubted that; but when I saw also that she was a woman to choose for herself and choose wisely—why, then I saw also, and all of a sudden, that the time had come and I was better out of the way; better, because a teacher has to know when to stop and trust the teaching to prove itself. Else by lingering on, he may easily do dreadful mischief, and all with the best will in the world. Do you understand this, too?"

Again the Commandant bent his head; for again, without knowing how or why, he understood.

"Well, I left the Islands, and there is no need to trouble you with my own story—though some day I will tell it if you care to hear. It contains a great deal of hard work, much good fortune, some suffering, too; and on the whole I am a very grateful woman, as I ought to be.... But we were talking of Ruth. She married, as she was born to marry, and her husband is a good man. She has children, and her letters are full of their sayings and doings, as a happy mother's should be. So, you see, our instinct was wise, and I did well to depart."

The Commandant considered this for a moment before answering: for her tone conveyed a question, almost a challenge.

"You were wise, perhaps, to go. But why in all these years have you never come back?"

She looked at him earnestly, and nodded. "Yes," she said, "I was afraid you would ask that; and yet I am glad, for it forces me to make confession, and I shall feel better to get it over.... Ruth loves me still, you see; but, of course, her husband comes first, and after her husband—if not sometimes before him—her children. That is as it should be, of course."

"Of course," the Commandant echoed.

"And of course I foresaw it. Remember, please, that I foresaw it before ever there was a question of young Tregarthen; so that my jealousy, if you are going to laugh at it, had nothing to do——"

"I am not in the least inclined to laugh."

"Thank you. We were not as ordinary sisters, you see, and ... and there is another thing I must tell you," she went on with a brisk change of tone. "Though Ruth and I have always written regularly, there is one thing I have always kept hidden from her—I mean my success, as you will call it. At first this wasn't deliberate at all.... A great chance came to me, a chance so good that I could hardly believe—yes, so incredible even to me, that I dared not talk of it, but walked humbly, and taught myself to think of it as a dream from which I must awake, and awake to find people laughing at my hopes. I hid it even from Ruth.... Afterwards, when the dream had become a certainty, it seemed yet harder to tell her. I had concealed so much, and to tell her now seemed like triumphing over her—so full her letters were of simple things and of her happiness in them. I was afraid my news would overawe her, would change her in some way; that she would think me some grand person, and not the sister to whom she had told all her mind—not, you must understand, that Ruth could be envious if she tried. But have you never seen how, when a man grows rich or powerful suddenly, his old friends, the best of them, draw away from him, not in envy at all, but just because they feel he has been taken from them?"

"Yes," said the Commandant, "I have seen such cases."

"And I wanted still to be Vazzy to her—even though I must come after husband and children."

"She knows, then, as little about your—your success—or almost as little, as I do?" asked the Commandant, quaintly.

Vashti broke into a gay little laugh. "But I am going to tell her now," she answered, rising—"and that is where I want you to help me. She has no idea at all that I am here, and I want—that is my little plan—to look in upon her before I make myself known. I want to see Ruth—my own Ruth—moving about her house; to feed my eyes on her good face, and learn if it has changed as I have tried to picture it changing; to know her as she has been during these years, not as she will be when we have kissed and I have told her.... I would steal upon her children, too, and watch them.... It is wonderful to think of Ruth's children!"

She sprang on to the crumbling wall, and stood erect there, shading her eyes, gazing towards Saaron Island, where the forenoon sun flashed upon the beaches and upon the roof of one small farm, half hidden in a fold of the hills. The Commandant put out a hand to steady her, for her perch was rickety and almost overhung the sea.

"Ruth is there!... To think of her so happy there—to see her, almost! Oh, sir—but if you could understand that the nearer I have travelled back, the more foolish my jealousy has seemed to grow, with every fear, every doubt!"

"Miss Vashti"—the Commandant spoke seriously, still with his arm stretched out ready to grip her by the skirt if she should over-balance herself or the treacherous wall give way—"I am glad, for your sister's sake, you have come; but I must warn you that all is not right on Saaron Island."

She turned slowly, and looked down upon him there from her altitude.

"What is not right?" she asked; and, while he hesitated, "You are not telling me that her letters have hidden anything?"

"No."

"Is it illness, then? Has anything happened to the children?"

"No," he answered again, and without more ado he told her the news he had heard from Mrs. Banfield.

"But"—she still looked down on him wondering—"but you told me just now that the Lord Proprietor was a just man?"

"I have not looked at the rights and wrongs of the case," he said hastily, conscious that he was incurring her scorn. "The Lord Proprietor may have much to say on his side."

"You have not inquired, then?"

"The news came to me only this morning, quite by chance."

"By chance?" she caught him up, and, springing off the wall, stood on the firm turf facing him. "But you are, or were, Governor of the Islands."

Again he bent his head. "I have told you that I no longer serve the Council even. The Lord Proprietor does not consult me."

Vashti gazed around her, on the broken roof of the ammunition shed, the dismantled platform, the unkempt glacis below it. "For what work, then, do they pay you?" she asked, bitterly.

"For none," he answered, but without resentment. "And—excuse me—" he went on, fumbling in his pocket, and producing a sovereign, which he tendered to her, "but your mention of pay reminds me to return you this, which Mrs. Treacher has handed to me. It appears—I must apologize for her—that she received it from you to give to the men who carried up your box from the steamer; but that, being a little frightened at the amount, she withheld it, thinking that possibly you had made a mistake."

Vashti took the coin. Her face was yet flushed a little—as he read it, with anger.

"It is true," said she pensively, "that I am fifteen years a stranger here."

His face brightened. "Ah," said he, "if you will make allowance for that, we may yet put everything right!"



CHAPTER XII

SAARON ISLAND

Saaron Island lies about due north of Brefar, which looks eastward upon Inniscaw across the narrow gut of Cromwell's Sound. There was a time (the tale goes) when these three Islands made one. At low-water springs you may cross afoot between Saaron and Brefar, and from either of them, with a little more danger, to Inniscaw, picking your way between the pools and along the sandy flats that curve about the southern end of the Sound and divide it from the great roadstead. Also there are legends of stone walls and foundations of houses laid bare as the waters have sunk after a gale, and by the next tides covered again with sand.

But of the past history of Saaron next to nothing could be told, even by Ruth's husband, young Farmer Tregarthen, who rented the Island and the one habitable house upon it. He could not even have explained how so bleak a spot as Saaron had come to possess this farmhouse, which was one of the roomiest on the Islands. He only knew that it had been built for one of his forefathers, and that this forgotten Tregarthen, or the Lord Proprietor who had chosen him for tenant, must have held ambitious views of the amount of farming possible on Saaron. So much might be guessed from the size and extent of the out-buildings. The "chall" or byre, for instance, had stalls for no less than twelve cows, whereas to-day all the Island's hundred-and-twenty acres barely afforded pasturage for two. Considering this, he was divided between two opinions; the first, that his ancestors had pastured their cattle upon Brefar, driving them to and fro across the flats at low water; the second, that in the old days the soil had been fertile, and that either the sand, which drove across it in the prevailing westerly winds, devastating every green herb, had started its invasion within the last hundred years or so, or that his forerunners had possessed and lost some art of coping with it. He had trenched the sand in many places on the southern and easterly slopes of the two hills into which the Island was divided, and along the valley between them, and everywhere, at the depth of two feet or less, the spade found a fine, strong clay, capable of carrying any crop.

Young Farmer Tregarthen in his slow way pondered a deal over this and similar problems. Indeed, you might say that in one sense the Island was never out of his thoughts. He had been born on it. At the age of sixteen he had succeeded to the farm (though it was nominally leased to his mother), and to the fight which his father had begun—the warfare which his enemy, the sand, never allowed him to relax. He could almost remember his father resuming it and repairing the stone hedges which enclosed the old fields. In those days Saaron had supported, or failed to support, five families; but of these all but Tregarthen had lost their clutch on the barren rock and drifted away to other islands. He could remember their going. He passed their roofless cottages half a dozen times a day.

They had subsisted mainly by kelp-making and piloting, helped out (it is to be feared) by more than a little smuggling. There were conclusions to be drawn from the cellars in the farmhouse, too ample for the needs of a small farmer. Tregarthen had a shrewd notion that most of the guineas which his mother had hoarded in a stocking had come at one time or another from the contraband trade; also he had a notion that his father's renewed activities in digging and hedging must have coincided pretty accurately with the building of the coastguard station upon St. Lide's and the arrival of a Divisional Officer. But if smuggling flourished once, it had fallen on evil days, and its secrets had been hidden from his childhood. Also about that time the pilotage had decayed in competition with the licensed pilots on St. Ann's, and but a few hovelling jobs in and about Cromwell's Sound fell to the share of the men of Saaron. (He could recall discussions and injurious words, half-understood at the time, faint echoes of that old quarrel between the two islands.)

But the kelp-making had been in full swing; and the business had a plenty of mystery and picturesqueness to bite it upon a child's memory. All the summer through, day after day, at low water, the Islanders would be out upon the beaches cutting the ore-weed and dragging it in sledges up the foreshore, where they strewed it above high-water mark, to dry in the sun. On sunny days they scattered and turned it, on wet days they banked it into heaps almost as tall as arrish-mows. From morning until evening they laboured, and towards midsummer, as the near beaches became denuded, would tail away, in twos and threes, and whole families, to camp among the Off Islands and raid them; until, when August came and the kelping season drew to an end, boat after boat would arrive at high-water and discharge its burden.

These operations filled the summer days; but it was towards nightfall that the real fun began. For then the men, women, and children would gather and build the kilns—pits scooped in the sand, measuring about seven feet across and three feet deep in the centre. While the men finished lining the sides of the kiln with stones, the women and girls would leap into it with armfuls of furze; which they lighted and so, strewing the dried ore-weed upon it, built little by little into a blazing pile. The great sea-lights which ring the Islands now make a brave show; but (say the older inhabitants) it will not compare with the illuminations of bygone summer nights, when as many as forty kilns would be burning together, and island signalling to island with bonfire-lights that flickered across the roadsteads and danced on the wild tide-races. From four to five hours the kilns would be kept burning, and the critical moment came when the mass of kelp began to liquefy, and word was given to "strike." Then a dozen or fourteen men would leap down with pitchforks and heave the red molten mass from side to side of the kiln, toiling like madmen, while the sweat ran shining down their half-naked bodies; and sometimes—and always on Midsummer Eve, which is Baal-fire night—while they laboured the women and girls would join hands and dance round the pit. In ten minutes or so all this excitement would die out, the dancers unlock their hands the men climb out of the pit and throw themselves panting on the sand, leaving the kelp to settle, cool, and vitrify. But while it lasted the boy knew of no excitement comparable with it. Little wonder that he remembered those fiery pits with the dark figures dancing around their brims! But yet more unforgettable was the smell of the burning kelp had been more than enough—that acrid, all-permeating, unforgettable odour. His mother had never been able to endure it. When the wind drove the smoke from the beach, she would shut every door and window, and build up every crevice with a barricade of sandbags; all in vain. It crept into the house, choking the besieged, causing their eyes to smart and their heads to ache, and scenting clothes, linen, furniture. Even the food tasted of it.

The kelp-making, however, was but a memory now, though a pungent one. A night's work at the kiln produced from two to three hundred-weight, and the price in the good seasons ranged from L4 to L5 a ton; so many shared the labour that a family had much ado to earn L10 in a whole season. Under such conditions, too, the work was roughly done. Too often the sides of the kiln would fall in and the sand—always the curse of Saaron—would mingle with the kelp and spoil it. And when some wiser folk in Scotland learned to prepare it under cover, in ovens with paved floors, the Islanders lost their market, almost in a single season.

Tregarthen could recall the kelp-making, but neither the circumstances of the collapse nor the sufferings that followed it. Children observe the toil, but are usually quite blind to the troubles of their elders. He only knew that the poorer families almost of a sudden drifted away from Saaron, that he and his father and mother were left alone on the island, that his father had begun to busy himself with farming and required his help, and that in consequence he was released from lessons. His mother, a farmer's daughter from Holy Vale in St. Lide's—the one nook in the Islands where you lost sight and almost sound of the sea, and could look out of window upon green trees—was a better-most person and something of a scholar. (The Tregarthens had always gone to the main island for their wives.) She taught the boy to read, to write a little, and even to cipher up sums in addition and subtraction. Also she took him over to Brefar to church on every fine Sunday and taught him his catechism, on the chance (often rumoured) that the Bishop would come across from the mainland to hold a Confirmation. But the Bishop of those days had a weak stomach, and, on the advice of his doctor, kept postponing the voyage.

Thus the boy grew up into a strong, slow man, gentle of manners, shy of the sound of his own voice, but tenacious of purpose and stubborn when his will was crossed. Except for the few months when he went wooing after Ruth Cara—in the year after his mother's death—his life, hopes, purposes, dreams and waking thoughts concentrated themselves upon Saaron, and from the day he brought his bride home to it the island became more than ever his sufficing world. He knew a thousand small things concerning it—secrets of the soil, of the tides, of the sand drift—voices of the wind, varying colours of the sea, and what weather they foretold—where this moss grew, that bird nested—in what week the wild duck arrived, on what wind the geese might be looked for, and what feeling in the spring air announced that the guillemots were due. He had learnt these things unconsciously, and was quite unaware of his knowledge, having never an occasion to review it or put it into words. Moreover, it was strangely limited. To his ancestors, to the folk who had lived here before him, he never gave a thought, except to wonder what their tillage had been or why they had rounded off a hedge at such and such a corner. Of the history of his own farm-house he could tell you next to nothing, and nothing at all of the small ruined church he passed at least twice a day—though this testified that Saaron had been populous once on a time. How long had the Tregarthens lived on the Island? How far back beyond the five or six generations attested by the signatures on old leases hidden away in his strong-box? One might as well ask how long the sandpipers and oyster-catchers had bred on their separate grounds under the north slope of the cliffs towards Brefar. On the summit of the hill stood eleven mounds, and in each mound (so tradition said) lay the burnt bones of royalty. Was he, perhaps, descended from these Island kings? Tregarthen would not have given sixpence to discover. They were dead, and less than names: the place of their burial belonged to him, and he had to wring a livelihood from it to support his wife and family. Sometimes, when he thought of his three youngsters—of the boy especially—the man felt a vague longing which puzzled him as well by its foolishness as by its strength; a longing to pass, when his time came, into these barren acres and watch (though helplessly) while his heir improved what he had painfully won. It was absurd, of course, to desire any such perpetuity; wicked, perhaps. It could not be reconciled with heaven and the future life promised by the Bible. Yet it haunted him, though at rare intervals, and not importunately. To the past he gave never a thought.

Ruth Tregarthen, his wife, was one of those women who find their happiness within their own doors. The farm-house stood some way up the slope of the southern hill, facing eastward over the valley which curved a little at its feet and spread into a line of small flat meadows around the East Bay, where the farmer kept his two boats; and the site had been chosen here to avoid the seas which, with a gale falling on top of the equinoctial springs, are driven up the valley from east and west, and meet to form an isthmus, cutting the Island in two.

The state-rooms of the farm-house—parlour, hall, and best bedrooms—looked eastward upon Cromwell's Sound; but the waters of the Sound were hidden from the lower windows by a stout hedge of tamarisk. The kitchen window at the back—by far the largest in the house, as the kitchen itself, where the family took its meals on every day but Christmas Day and Good Friday, was the true focus of the household—looked across the town-place, or farm-yard, upon another tall hedge of tamarisk, above which climbed the hill, steep, strewn with small white stones, shutting out the Atlantic.

The kitchen table stood close beside this window, just beyond the edge of the bacon-rack; and directly opposite, across the wide paved floor, was a wide open hearth, fitted with crooks and brandises, where all the day long something or other would be cooking, and where the night through the logs smouldered and fell in soft grey ash, to be fed and stirred to flame again in the early morning. Yes, and as though this was not enough, the hearth had beside it an iron door which, being opened, disclosed to the children a long narrow hole filled with fire; vision to them of a passage leading straight to hell, though their own mother (and she so gentle) stoked it with bunches of furze, and drew from it loaves and saffron cakes, hot and detectable.

To the children it seemed that their parents seldom or never talked, and never by any chance took a rest.

Their names were Annet, Linnet and Matthew Henry, and this was the order of their ages—Annet nine, Linnet seven, and Matthew Henry rising five. On fine days they attended school at Inniscaw, being rowed to and fro across the Sound by John Nanjulian (Old Jan), the hind, or Stevy, the farm-boy. These, with Melia Mundy, the house-girl, whose parents lived on Brefar, made up Farmer Tregarthen's employ, and took their meals at table with the family.

The school which Annet, Linnet, and Matthew Henry attended had been built by the Lord Proprietor on Inniscaw shore, to serve the three islands of Inniscaw, Brefar, and Saaron. The children brought their school-pence weekly, on Friday mornings; but, of course, their pence did not pay—scarcely even began to pay—for the cost. Also there were days, and sometimes many days together, when no boat could be put across; and, considering this, the Lord Proprietor (who was a philanthropist in his way, but his way happened to be a despotic one) had commanded his architect to prepare plans for a smaller school on Brefar. This, to be sure, would not help the three children on Saaron; but it gave him yet another reason to feel indignant with that fellow Tregarthen for clinging so obstinately to his solitude and barren acres.

The children themselves did not regret living so far from school; for they were ordinary healthy youngsters though brighter-witted than most, and felt as other youngsters feel towards that wise and elderly beneficence which boxes them up in a room for instruction. To be sure they missed the games in the play-ground before and after school; but this was no such loss as the reader, remembering his own childhood, might be disposed to think. For, sad to tell, only a few of the hundreds of thousands of children attending schools really understand games, or can be said to have learnt to play, and the Island children were in this respect some way behind their brothers and sisters on the mainland. If at whiles the small trio looked back wistfully as old Jan rowed them homeward, or if the shouts that followed across the water from the playground now and again reproached them, on the whole they would not have changed places with their school-fellows even at a price. After all, no island in the world could compare with Saaron. Their father had never said this, but they were sure that he thought it; and their father knew everything. As he walked along he would say suddenly, "Go there"—but without lifting his eyes, just waving his hand towards the spot—"and there you will find a bunting's nest, or a stone-chat's"; nor once in a dozen times would he be mistaken.

There were compensations, too, in living on an island where on any morning you might wake and find a gale of wind blowing, forbidding you to go to school. But even in fine weather one could always look forward to Saturday and Sunday, each a whole holiday.

It was Saturday. The three had opened their eyes soon after daybreak and lay in their cots "chirruping," as their mother called it—talking, planning out a campaign of adventures for the long two days before them. The sun shone through their nursery window, which faced the East. They had curled themselves to sleep before the great fog came up and covered the Islands, and the sound of guns had neither awakened them nor reached their dreams. They awoke to a clear morning sky, and while they chatted, waiting the order to tumble out and dress, their father looked in at the nursery door and astonished and excited them with news of a great steamer which had entered the Roads in the night and was already lifting anchor to pursue her voyage.

From the hill above the farmhouse they watched her, after breakfast, as she steamed past the southern point of the island, nosed her way slowly through Chough Sound, between Inniscaw and St. Lide's, and so headed away to the northward until her smoke lay in a low trail on the horizon. They had never before seen a steamer of her size.

Thus strangely began a day which the three had still stranger cause to remember. They had planned to take their dinner wrapped in their handkerchiefs and climb to the old tombs on the hill overlooking Brefar, then to play at being Aztecs, from hints which Annet had dug out of an old History of Mexico on her mother's bookshelf, and at hiding treasure from the Spaniards, whose ships were to come sailing through the Off Islands. Having concealed their hoard, they were either to descend upon the Western Bay, which they called The Porth, and there offer a bloody resistance to the invaders, or (this was Annet's notion, which for the present she kept to herself) to wait until the north channel dried and make a desperate escape across the sands to Brefar. The trouble was, she could not be sure of low water being early enough to let them dash across and back before dusk again. She was a brave girl—a great deal braver, at least in these adventures, than her sister Linnet; but she had to bear in mind that Matthew Henry was but five years old and easily tired, and also that if they arrived home after dusk her mother would be anxious and her father angry. So she nursed the project in her own heart, and when the three had taken seizin of the northern hill, eaten their manchets of saffron cake, and shared their canful of milk, she took up a post from which, while the others scanned the offing for Spaniards, she could watch and time the ebb of the tide on the flats.

The afternoon was sunny; the flat rock on which they were perched lay out of the wind's reach; and to beguile the interval of waiting Annet drew out a book which she had brought with her—a much-worn copy of Hans Andersen which had arrived at Christmas, three years ago, as a gift from that mysterious Aunt Vazzy of whom their mother talked so often. Linnet stoutly maintained that this aunt of theirs, whom they had never set eyes on, must be a fairy herself—neither more nor less; and Annet had her doubts on this point. But the book, at any rate, was real, with a real inscription on the fly-leaf; and the children (though some of the stories puzzled them) believed it to be the most beautiful book in the world.

Each child had a favourite story. Matthew Henry's was "The Tinder-Box," and he would wake in the night from dreams, deliciously terrible, of the three dogs "with eyes as big as coach wheels." Linnet, who had a practical mind, preferred such as dealt with rolling-pins, flat-irons, and shirt-collars, because these were familiar objects, and their histories usually ended cheerfully—(she liked "The Ugly Duckling" because he was a duckling, but objected to much of the tale as being too sad). Annet declared for "The Little Mermaid," which is perhaps the saddest of all; and this was the one she chose to-day, though half-penitently, because she felt pretty certain that it would make Linnet cry.

But to-day Linnet no sooner recognized the opening of the story than she set her face defiantly; and when Annet reached that most pathetic passage where the little mermaid glances down sorrowfully at her fish's tail, and "Let us be merry," says the grandmother, "let us dance and play for the three hundred years we have to live," Linnet lifted her chin, stared hard at the horizon and said resolutely—albeit in a voice that trembled a little—

"I don't believe there are any such things as mermaids!"

Young Matthew Henry opened his mouth and stared, round-eyed at such dreadful scepticism.

Annet, too, gazed up from her book.

"But the story says there are," she answered, simply and gravely.

"Who ever saw one?" persisted doubting Linnet.

"Hundreds of people—" Annet began, and with that, as a shadow fell on the rock, she lifted her eyes and uttered a little cry.

Just above, on the flat tombstone that jutted over the ridge, stood a beautiful lady, and looked down on them.



CHAPTER XIII

THE LADY FROM THE SEA

How it happened the children never precisely knew. When they came to compare notes that evening their recollections varied on several important particulars. But this was certain, that before they could rise and run—and Matthew Henry protested that, for his part, he had never an idea of running—the apparition had stepped down from her pedestal and seated herself among them in the friendliest way.

"Good day!" she nodded. "Now let me see ... this is Annet, and this is Linnet, and that is Matthew Henry, and I hope you're all uncommonly well."

Annet gasped that they were quite well, thank you. Who and what could she be, this lady out of nowhere?... Not a witch, for no witch could smile with such a beautiful face or wear such beautiful clothes. On the other hand, Annet had not supposed that fairies were ever so tall. Yet something of the sort she must be, for she knew their names....

"You want to know where I come from? But that is easy." The stranger reached out a white hand with a diamond upon it, and Annet yielded the book to her without resisting. "I come from here"—and she tapped the pages mysteriously.

"But how can that be?" demanded Linnet, who was always the matter-of-fact one. "Out of a book! Such things do not happen."

Vashti laughed merrily. "I assure you," she answered, with a glance at the fly-leaf, "I have been in the book all the while you were reading; and," she added, her eyes softening as they rested on the child, "of you three it is Linnet who is most like her mother."

They had not thought of this before, but she had no sooner said it than they knew it to be the truth; and the discovery made her more marvellous than ever.

"Yes," she went on, "I have lived inside this book; and, what is more, I know the man who wrote it."

She looked around on the three faces; and—so strange are children—for the first time in his life Matthew Henry at once asserted himself as a person entirely different from his sisters. For Annet and Linnet merely looked puzzled; to them the book was a book, just as the hill upon which they sat was a hill, and they had never troubled their heads about such a thing as an author. But Matthew Henry opened his infantine eyes still wider.

"Tell us about him," he demanded.

Vashti eyed the child curiously for a moment before answering. "He lives in the north," she said, "in a city where the sea is sometimes frozen for weeks in the winter, and where night after night you may see the Northern Lights over the roofs. That is why he writes so much of snow and fir-trees and cold winters."

Annet nodded. "I have seen the Northern Lights—once—from Saaron here," she announced proudly. "Father took me out of my bed and held me up to the window to look at them; Linnet, too—but she was too young to remember, and Matthew Henry was not even born at the time."

"But tell us," persisted Matthew Henry, "about the man who wrote the book."

"Well, the Northern Lights were shining in the streets on the night when I met him. I drove to his house in a sleigh from the theatre—if you know what a theatre is?" Vashti paused dubiously; but Annet nodded and assured her—

"That's all right. We don't know about these things, but they are all in the book."

"And so," said Vashti, "is the man himself, or most of him. He was a queer, shy old man, with oddly-shaped hands and feet, but oh, such timid eyes! And he lived in a fine house all by himself, for he had no wife. In the days when he wanted a wife he had been an Ugly Duckling, and now, when he had turned into a swan, it was too late to marry. He was very old indeed; but this was his birthday, and he had lit up all his rooms for us and made a great feast, and at the feast he made me sit on his right hand.... There were princesses to do him honour, but he chose me out because I had sung to him; and the princesses were not angry because he was an old man. Out in the streets the people were letting off fireworks, and while he talked to me I could hear the whole sky banging with rockets and crackers. It put me in mind of his story of 'The Flying Trunk.' But he talked of Italy and the South, because I had come from there; and of the Mediterranean and of beautiful inland lakes which he had known, but would never see again; for he was over seventy. And he told me that, in spite of the snow and frost outside, he could feel the spring coming northward again with the storks. It was the last time (he said) that he should ever see it, but he filled his glass and drank to me because, as he put it, I had sung the South back to him for this last time. So now you know why I was proud to come to you out of his book."

"But," said Linnet, gravely, "we were reading about mermaids; and you can't be one of them, because there aren't any."

Matthew Henry would by no means allow this. "But Jan's father caught one," he objected, "in a pool just inside Piper's Hole, where she was left by the tide. He has told us about her, dozens of times. And besides," he added, getting in a home-thrust, "if there isn't any such thing, why were you crying over the story, just now?"

"I wasn't," contended Linnet, very red in the face. But she shifted her ground. "Why," pointing to Vashti's skirts—"her clothes aren't even wet, to say nothing of a tail!"

Vashti laughed. "My dears, you are both right and both wrong. As for the mermaids, Linnet, they were friends of mine before I reached your age, and you must let me introduce you to one by-and-by, to cure you of disbelieving. But you are right about me. I am not a mermaid; and yet I have come from the sea ... like the Queen Zenobia."

"Who was she?" asked Annet, speaking for the others.

"She was a Queen in Carthage, more than two thousand years ago. She came to the Islands in a ship, to visit the tin-mines which used to lie between them and the mainland before the sea covered them, and from which she drew her great wealth. Her ship arrived in the middle of the Great Storm; and before she came to land, here on Saaron, the waters were rolling over the richest part of all her dependencies. Little she cared; for in the first place she had never seen it, and could not realise her loss, and moreover her ship had been tossing for three days and nights, past all hope, so that she was glad enough to reach a shore, however barren. She reached it, holding on to the shoulders of a brown man, a Moor, who swam for land as the ship began to break up; and the story goes that when his feet touched the sand he fell forward and died, for the swimming had burst his heart. But have you never heard the song about it?" Vashti sank her voice and began to chant, and low though the strain was, and monotonous, the children had never heard such wonderful singing—

It was the Queen Zenobia With her gold crown, That sailed away from Africa With a down-derry-down!

—To westward and to northward From Carthage town, Beyond the strait of Cadiz The sky began to frown.

"Well-a-mercy!" cried her ladies, All of high renown; "I think the sea is troublesome And we shall all drown."

The seas came white aboard And wetted her gown; "Would I were back in Carthage A-walking up and down!

That I were back in Carthage Which is dry ground, I would give my jewels And a thousand pound."

Then round went the good ship, And thrice she went round, The third time she brast herself With a down-derry-down!

Some cried misericordia, And others did swoun; But up there stood a guardsman A naked man and brown—

"You are the Queen of Carthage And gey young to drown; But hold you to my girdle That goes me around; And swim with me to Saaron, As I will be bound."

"Your girdle it is breaking That goeth you around." "Nay, hold you to the girdle That is strong yet and sound; My heart you felt a-breaking, But here is dry ground."

With white sand and shingle The shore did abound; With white sand she covered him And built him a mound.

With flotsam and with wreckage The shore was all strown; She built of it a cottage, And there she sat down.

"Though this be not Africa, Nor yet Carthage town, Deo-gracey," said Zenobia, "That I did not drown!"

"That's where the tune changes," interrupted Matthew Henry, clapping his small sunburnt hands together.

"You know the song then?" asked Vashti, looking from one to the other.

All three nodded. "We know a verse or two," Annet answered. "Mother was always singing it when she rocked Matthew Henry to sleep, and sometimes we get her to sing as much as she can remember for a treat."

"But she can only remember five or six verses," said Linnet; "and her voice is not beautiful like yours."

Annet and Matthew Henry protested. Their mother's was a beautiful voice; one of the most beautiful in the world.

"But not beautiful like hers," Linnet persisted. "I mean that it's quite different."

They admitted this—so much their loyalty allowed them. "And I like the end of the song best," Linnet went on, "because it's cheerfuller. It goes on 'At daybreak she dressed her....'"

But for a moment or two, though she felt the children's eyes fastened on her expectantly, Vashti did not resume the song. Those same expectant eyes were open windows through which she looked into the past, as into a house tenanted by ghosts. Through Annet's, through Linnet's, she saw familiarly, recognising the dim children that played within and beyond the shadow of the blinds. But the child Matthew Henry's frightened her. She and Ruth had lost a brother once. He had died in infancy, a scrap of childhood, almost forgotten.... Yes, Matthew Henry's eyes too had a playroom behind them; and there too a shadowy child played at hide and seek.

Her voice shook a little as she picked up the old song—

At daybreak she dressed her, Her wet hair she wound, When she saw a lithe shepherd, Stood under the mound.

He stood among the wreckage With crook and with hound, Alone in the morning, That most did astound.

"O tell to me, lithe shepherd, What king owns this ground?" "No king, ma'am, but Zenobia, A Queen of renown."

"Lithe lad, she is shipwrecked; Myself saw her drown." "Then 'tis you are Queen of Saaron If you will step down.

"I have sheep, goat, and cattle And a clear three pound, If you'll mate with me and settle In goods we will abound."

"Well-a-way!" sighed Zenobia, "I have lost Carthage town, But I like this lithe shepherd So handsome and brown.

"If I marry you," said Zenobia, "Farewell to renown! If I marry you," said Zenobia, "I mate with a clown. But I'll marry you for all that, With a down-derry-down!"

"And," said Linnet, as the song concluded, "they married and had twelve children—six boys and six girls. Mother told me about it."

But Matthew Henry turned to the singer gravely. "Is it true?" he asked. "And are you really Queen Zenobia?"

"Come and see," said Vashti, rising. "The sands are bare between us and Brefar, and if Linnet is brave enough we will take a boat and she shall be shown the cave where Jan's father caught the mermaid."

"But we must get back again," objected Annet.

"I will see that you get back again."

"The sands may not be safe."

"When you told us yourself that they were quite safe!" protested Matthew Henry. "And you said you would lead us over and back without any danger at all."

"The fact is," said Vashti, quietly, "Annet feels herself responsible for you, and thinks that very likely I am a witch."

The child faced her bravely, biting her lip upon the inward struggle.

"You are not a witch," she said. "Your eyes are too good. And, besides, there are people in Brefar who will take care of us if we miss our way back."

Vashti smiled, and again half sadly, for out of her own past this child confronted her. "That is brave, Annet; brave enough for the moment, though by and by we shall have to be braver. See how the sands shine below us! Shall we race for them and see who wins?"

She took Matthew Henry's small, unresisting hand, and the four pelted down the slope. Something in Vashti's eyes—it could not have been in the words of her last answer, for they were mysterious enough—had apparently reassured Annet, who cast away care and called back in triumph as she won the race down to the golden sands.

They were damp yet in patches, and these patches shone like metal reflecting the greenish-blue spaces that showed between the clouds in the heart of the gathering sunset. But along the fairway the sand lay firm to the tread, yet soft to the look as a stretch of amber-coloured velvet laid for their feet. Beyond rose Brefar, with its lower cliffs in twilight, its rounded upper slopes one shining green. Vashti had kilted her gown higher and helped the two girls to pin up their short skirts. All had taken off their shoes and stockings, for here and there a shallow channel must be waded.

They crossed without mishap, and, having shod themselves again, mounted the turfy slope where the larks flew up from their hiding-places among the stones. Vashti's talk was of the birds, for in all Brefar the spot best worth visiting is Merriman's Head, where the birds congregate in their thousands—cormorants, curlews, whimbrels, gulls and kittiwakes, oyster-catchers, sandpipers—these all the year round—and in early summer the razorbills and sea parrots. Zenobia, it appeared, knew not only Merriman's Head, but every rock, down to the smallest and farthest in the Off Islands, where these creatures nested. She spoke to them of the island from which Annet took her name—a low-lying ridge to the west of St. Ann's, curved like a snake, in nesting-time sheeted with pink thrift. There the sea-parrots breed, and so thickly that you can scarcely set foot ashore without plunging into their houses; but there is a mound near the western end where no sea-parrot may come, for the herring-gulls and the black-backs claim it for their own. She spoke of Great Rose, still further westward, where the gulls encamp among the ruined huts once used by the builders of the Monk Lighthouse; of Little Rose, where the great cormorant is at home; of Melligan and Carregan, the one favoured by shags, the other by razor-bills and guillemots. And so talking, while they wondered, she brought them across the hill to the great headland.

Merriman's Head, in truth, is itself an islet, being cut off from Brefar by a channel, scarcely eight feet wide, through which the seas rush darkly with horrible gurglings. The cleft goes down sheer, and was cut, they say, with one stroke of a giant's sword. Beyond it the headland rises grim and stark—a very Gibraltar of the birds, that roost in regiments on its giddy ledges.

As the children came down to the brink a flock of white gulls seemed to drop from the rock, hung in the air for a moment, and began wheeling overhead in wide circles, uttering their strange cries. A score of little oyster-catchers, too, tucked up their scarlet legs and skimmed off in flight. But the majority kept their posts and looked down almost disdainfully.

"They know we can't get to them," said Matthew Henry. "But wait till I am grown up! Then I'll come over to Brefar and build a bridge."

"You will not need a bridge when you are grown up," said Vashti. "See!" She stepped back a pace or two, and the children, before they guessed her purpose, saw her flash past them and leap. She cleared the chasm, easily alighted, and stood smiling back at them, while the birds poured out from their ledges, cloud upon cloud of them. Their wings darkened the air. Their uproar beat from cliff to cliff, and back again in broken echoes, like waves caught in a narrow cave and rebounding. Vashti looked up and laughed. Like a witch she stood, waving her arms to them.

"It is easy," she called back to the children; "easy enough, if you don't let the water frighten you. Why, Annet could jump it if she dared. Annet ... but no, child! go back!"

But Annet, with a quick glance at her, and another at the water swirling below, had set her teeth and stepped back half-a-dozen paces. She would follow this woman, witch or no witch.

Linnet cried, too, and Matthew Henry. Vashti, stretching out both hands to wave back the child, opened them suddenly to catch her—and not too soon, for Annet alighted on a rock that sloped back towards the gulf, and had measured her powers against the leap so narrowly that her heels overhung the water and her body was bending backward when Vashti gripped, and, dragging her up to firm ground, took her in both arms.

"But why? Why, Annet?"

"I don't know," Annet answered, almost stupidly. The danger past, she felt faint of a sudden and dazed; nor could she understand what the strange lady meant by embracing her again, almost with a sob, and murmuring:

"The little water, and so hard to cross! But we had the courage, Annet—you and I!"

She turned and lifted her voice in a long, full-throated cry, that sent the birds flying in fresh circles from the eyries over which they were poising; and before its echoes died between the cliffs a boat came round the point—a boat with one man in it, and that man Major Vigoureux.

At another time they might have wondered how a boat came here, and why the Governor himself—whom they had seldom seen, but regarded from afar with awe—should be in charge of it. But the afternoon had fed them full with marvels. Here the great man was, and in a boat, and the strange lady stood apparently in no awe of his greatness.

"The little ones are tired," said Vashti. "We will sail them home and land them on Saaron."

The Commandant backed his boat skilfully into the passage between the walls of rock, lifted the two younger ones on board, and then stretched out a hand to the other shore to help Vashti and Annet. When all were stowed, he pushed out for an offing, and hoisted his small lug-sail, while Vashti took the tiller.

The breeze blew off the shore. The little boat heeled, flinging the spray merrily from her bows. Beyond and under the slack of the sail a golden sea stretched away to the dying sunset.

It was an enchanted hour, and it held the children silent. In silence they were landed on the beach of West Porth, and climbed over the hill to their house. From its summit they looked down upon a small sail dancing through the sunken reefs towards the Roads, away into the twilight where the sea lights already shone from the South Islands.



CHAPTER XIV

AFTER SERVICE

"They are good children," said Vashti, as she and the Commandant sat at breakfast together next morning, which was Sunday.

The Commandant did not answer for a moment. He was stirring his tea, in a brown study, nor did he note that Vashti's eyes were resting on him with an amused smile. She supposed these fits of abstraction to be habitual with him, due to living and taking his meals alone; but in fact his thoughts were wrestling with two or three very urgent problems. To begin with, he had plunged yet deeper in debt to Mr. Tregaskis. The total, to be sure, amounted to something under twenty-five shillings; but to a man with just one penny in his pocket this left no choice but between recklessness and panic, and the Commandant's spirits swung from one to the other like a pendulum. Panic asserted itself in the small hours, when he awoke in his bed and wondered what would happen when pay-day came, should it bring no pay with it ... and to a man lying sleepless in the small hours, the worst seems not only possible but likely. Then, as daylight waxed and he awoke again from a short doze, to his surprise he found himself absolutely reckless. As well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb! The ordeal lay three days off, and in three days anything might happen; but meanwhile this was certainly happening—a woman accomplished and beautiful had stepped into his life and was changing all the colour of it. He guessed the danger, put purposely averted his thoughts from it and from the certainty of scandal. Archelaus, Treacher, Mrs. Treacher—all three had been sworn to secrecy, and all three could be trusted. These folks read no harm, nothing beyond an amusing mystery, in Vashti's sojourn, and in particular she had made Mrs. Treacher her obedient slave. Yet the secret must come out, and in spite of Archelaus, who had brought his master's boat round and moored her cunningly under the lee of the rocks overhung by the Keg of Butter Battery. There, while the weather held, the Commandant and his guest could slip away without fear of prying eyes and sail off among the islands—as they had sailed off yesterday, Vashti sitting low and covering herself with a spare-sail, until beyond sight of St. Lide's quay and the houses on the slope. To be sure they had to reckon with Mr. Rogers' telescope, or rather to leave it out of account. If Mr. Rogers' telescope should prove indiscreet, Mr. Rogers must be let into the secret, and might be relied on to join the conspiracy.

The Commandant, however, was in no hurry to share his happiness. Since his youth he had made few friends, and in all his life had never known comradeship with a woman. Suddenly, and as a well-spring in the desert, Vashti had come into the dull round of his duty—his purposeless, monotonous duty—to refresh it; nor perhaps were the waters less sweet for the feeling that they were stolen. So he lived in the day, and put off thinking of the inevitable end.

One thing only troubled his happiness. He foresaw that the end, when it came, would mean for him something more serious than parting. He could not have told why, but from the moment when Vashti had turned on him and asked, "For what work do they pay you?" he had known that henceforward his conscience would not sleep until he had made a clean breast to the War Office and resigned his commission. It was not that her question told him anything new; only that he saw himself judged in her eyes, and in their light discovered that his conscience had been tolerating what was really intolerable. Her departure, then, would mean the end of all things; for on the very next day he would send in his papers and face the world alone—the very next day, and not until then. So much respite he gave himself; and this respite, and not the prospect of parting, cast the only shade upon his happiness. For he felt that he held her friendship on a false pretence; that if she knew the truth, she would despise him. That is why the Commandant sat in a brown study.

"They are good children," repeated Vashti, "but like all other children they know nothing of their elders' troubles. I remember that I was nine or ten before ever it occurred to me that my father could have any troubles.... Now from the top of the hill where those three youngsters sat talking their fairy-tales, I looked over Cromwell's Sound and saw their father, Eli Tregarthen, pulling across from Inniscaw. By the very stoop of his shoulders over the paddles I seemed to read that the world had gone wrong with the man, and when he beached his boat and walked up the hill towards Saaron Farm, I felt sure of it. Of course you may laugh and set it down to fancy, for the man was a good three-quarters of a mile away."

The Commandant, however, did not laugh. "I think, very likely, you are right," said he; "and the man had been over to Inniscaw to make a last appeal to the Lord Proprietor."

"I wonder," mused Vashti, "if he is the sort of man to tell his wife?"

The Commandant pondered this and shook his head, meaning that he found it hard to answer. "I know very little of Tregarthen. In manner, though polite enough, he always struck me as reserved to the last degree."

"Men of that manner are often the frankest with their wives," said Vashti; "though again, if you ask me how I know it, I must answer that I can't tell you." She sat for a moment, her brows puckered with thought; then, leaning forward, rested her elbows on the table, while with eyes fixed seriously upon him she checked off the pros and cons on her fingers. "On the one hand Eli Tregarthen, being a reserved man, and brought up on Saaron, probably loves the island after a fashion that Ruth understands very dimly if at all. I love my sister——"

The Commandant nodded.

"—But all the same I know where she is weak as well as where she is strong. She never had that feeling for the Islands which helps me to guess how her husband feels about Saaron. I can't explain it"—here Vashti opened her palms and lowered them till her arms from the elbows rested flat upon the table. "Perhaps I can't make you, who were not born here, understand why it would be grief to me to think of being buried in any other earth. But I expect that Eli Tregarthen feels it, and feels that, if they uproot him from Saaron, his life will from that moment become a different thing, in which he has not learnt—perhaps never will learn—to take much interest. It's queer that, with just this difference between us, Ruth should have been the one to stay behind and I the one to go. But fate is queer.... Ruth is like her namesake in the Bible; home for her is the roof covering those she loves, and would be though she changed the Islands for the other end of the world. Therefore," said Vashti, sagely, "if she feels for her husband's trouble at all, it would be not as for a trouble that afflicted them both equally; she would be sorry for him as she would be if he were hurt or diseased. And you know that silent men, like Tregarthen, when they are struck by disease, will sometimes hide it from their wives to the last possible moment—will tell no one, but least of all their wives."

"Yes, that is true," the Commandant agreed.

"On the other hand"—here Vashti resumed her checking—"Ruth has a wonderful gift of coaxing people to confide in her even those things they very much doubt her understanding. She used to get me to tell my woes for the mere consolation of feeling her cheek against mine. She had a wonderful knack, too, of obliging me to be open with her, without ever asking it; and unless those children's faces and talk misled me quite, they were formed in a house where the parents keep no secrets from one another.... You can always tell."

This was news to the Commandant; and he admitted that, as an old bachelor, he had never observed it.

"Always!" insisted Vashti, nodding. "They spoke of their father quite as if he were one of themselves; which is not only rare, and not only proves that Eli Tregarthen is a good man, but persuades me that, being in trouble, he has told his wife."

"You are reasoning beyond my depths," said the Commandant. "But it all sounds admirably wise, and I grant it. What next?"

"Why, if Eli has told her, she will be in trouble to-day and I must go to her."

"To Saaron? This morning?"

"To Saaron, certainly; but not this morning, if you are engaged."

"To tell the truth I had meant to go to church; that is, if you can spare me."

Simple man that he was, he had meant—having a load to lift presently off his conscience—to receive and be confirmed by the Sacrament. "Ye that do truly and earnestly repent"—the words had been in his ears at the moment when he took his resolve. Hopeless though the prospect might be, he steadfastly intended to lead a new life.

"My friend," said Vashti. "I am contrite enough already for the amount of your time I have wasted. We will put off our voyage until the evening."

He smiled wryly, remembering how she had asked, "For what work do they pay you?"

But Vashti having decided upon an evening expedition, would not listen to his offer to sacrifice his church-going; and so to church he went, and confirmed himself, and remained to take the Sacrament on his new resolution.

Now whether or not he would have remained could he have divined what was happening on Garrison Hill I have no wish—as it would be indecent—to inquire.

But let us go back to Miss Gabriel.

* * * * *

Miss Gabriel, all the previous day, had been suffering from a sense of defeat, and at the hands of an enemy she had fallen into the habit of despising. A woman (or a man, for that matter) of Miss Gabriel's temper sees the world peopled with antagonists, and (perhaps fortunately for her amour propre) cannot see that her occasional victor is not only quite indifferent to his victory but has very possibly succeeded on the mere strength of not caring two pins about it, or even on the mere strength of not knowing that there was any fight going on. Such insouciance would have galled Miss Gabriel past endurance had it not, mercifully, lain outside her range of apprehension. As it was, she felt that the Commandant had taken her easily, at a disadvantage, and routed her—horse, foot, artillery, baggage.

And at the moment she had collapsed without a struggle. There lay the sting. She had meekly thrown up her hand, though it held one exceedingly strong trump. That woman in furs and diamonds.... Why had she not insisted on the existence of her own eyes and held her ground, demanding whence that woman came and what she did on Garrison Hill at such an hour?

The longer Miss Gabriel thought of it—and she thought of it all the next day—the more firmly she refused to believe herself the victim of an hallucination. She lived frugally; her nerves and digestion were alike in excellent order; in all her life she had never suffered from faintness, and but once or twice from a headache. The keenness of her eyesight was notorious, and she had a healthy contempt for anyone who believed in ghosts.... Moreover, Charlotte Pope, though inclined now to hedge about it, had undoubtedly seen the apparition.

"I wish, Elizabeth, you could find something else to talk about," pleaded Mrs. Pope, with a shiver. "You and I know everyone on the Islands and there's no one in the least like—like what we saw; while as for her jewels, they must have cost hundreds, if they were real."

"Ha!" exclaimed Miss Gabriel, with a decided sniff.

"I don't mean 'real' in that sense, Elizabeth; and I put it to you, Where could she have come from?"

Miss Gabriel could not answer this, nor did she try. "Then you did see her?" she was content to say.

"I—I thought I did."

"And I, Charlotte, am positive you did. Have you told your husband about it?"

"Not yet."

"Don't, then. Between ourselves, my dear Charlotte, an idea has occurred to me, and I fancy that if Major Vigoureux thinks he can delude me with his painted hussies he will find himself mistaken!"

More, for the moment, Miss Gabriel would not disclose. But it is to be feared that her design occupied her thoughts in church next morning to the detriment of her spiritual benefit. The good folk of Garland Town had—and still have—a pleasant custom of lingering outside the church porch for a few minutes after service to exchange greetings and a little mild gossip with their neighbours; and to Mr. and Mrs. Pope, thus lingering, Miss Gabriel attached herself with an air that meant business.

"Fine morning," said Miss Gabriel.

"The weather," assented Mr. Pope, clearing his throat, "is quite remarkable for the time of year. As I was observing to Mrs. Fossell, a moment ago, we might be in August month. Whether we attribute it or not to the influence of the Gulf Stream, in the matter of temperature we are wonderfully favoured."

"Quite so," said Miss Gabriel; "and I was about to propose our taking advantage of it for a short stroll on Garrison Hill, to whet our appetite." She heard Mrs. Pope gasp and went on hardily, "You and I, Mr. Pope, can remember the time when all the rank and fashion of Garland Town trooped up regularly after divine service to Garrison Hill. 'Church parade,' we used to call it."

"Indeed yes, Miss Gabriel—and with the Garrison band playing before us. Those were brave old days; and now I daresay that except for a stray pair of lovers no one promenades on Garrison Hill from year's end to year's end."

"It shocked me, the other night, to discover how completely I had forgotten it."

"You had indeed, ha-ha!" laughed Mr. Pope, with a roguish glance at his wife.

Miss Gabriel, too, glanced at her, and even more expressively. "Admire my boldness," it seemed to say, "and oblige me by imitating it as well as you can." Mrs. Pope began to tremble in her shoes.

"Oh, it was ridiculous! And I have a fancy to go over the ground again and prove to you, and to ourselves, how ridiculous it was. Shall we?"

"With pleasure." Mr. Pope bowed and offered his arm. In Garland Town, if you walked with two ladies it was de rigueur to offer an arm to each.

The stars in their courses seemed to be helping Miss Gabriel's design. Her one anticipated difficulty—for she sought an interview with Mrs. Treacher, to pump her in the presence and hearing of the Lord Proprietor's agent—had been a possible interruption by the Commandant. To her glee she had noted that the Commandant kept his seat after service. For another thirty minutes at least the coast would be clear.

She had never a doubt of bribing Mrs. Treacher—or, to put it more delicately, of inducing her to talk. Mrs. Treacher's manner had been brusque the night before last; but Miss Gabriel's own manner was brusque, whether to friend or to foe, and nice shades of address escaped her. Mrs. Treacher was certainly poor, and with a poverty to which a shilling meant a great deal. And Miss Gabriel had a shilling ready in her pocket, as well as half-a-crown as a heroic resource in case of unlooked-for obstinacy. But the shilling would almost certainly suffice. Had not the donative antimacassar already established a claim upon the Treachers' gratitude?

Again, the stars in their courses seemed to be fighting for Miss Gabriel's design. For as the two ladies climbed the hill on Mr. Pope's arm, and when they were almost abreast of the barrack door, who should appear at the garden gate, on the opposite side of the road, but Mrs. Treacher herself? Catching sight of the visitors she halted in startled fashion, with her hand on the hasp of the gate.

"So few ever walk this way in these times," said Miss Gabriel, "I declare we have frightened the poor woman. Mrs. Treacher!"—she lifted her voice as she advanced.

"Ma'am."

"Mrs. Pope and I have been feeling not a little ashamed of ourselves that at the time we did not—er—recognise your—your kindness to us the other evening."

"Night, to be accyrate," said Mrs. Treacher, still interposing her ample body between them and the entrance to the garden. "Didn't you?"

"You put yourself to some inconvenience on our account," pursued Miss Gabriel; "and—and if you won't mind accepting—" Miss Gabriel held out the smaller coin by way of finishing the sentence.

"What's that for?" asked Mrs. Treacher.

"The circumstances were so unusual, and in a way—ha, ha!—so amusing——"

"Oh!" Mrs. Treacher interrupted. "Unusual, was they? I'm glad to hear it."

"Why, of course, they were unusual," Miss Gabriel persisted, albeit a trifle dashed; "and indeed so incredibly absurd that we have brought Mr. Pope to hear your account of them; for, I assure you, he'll hardly believe us."

Mrs. Treacher looked at Mr. Pope solemnly for the space of about ten seconds, and then as solemnly at the ladies.

"What won't he believe?"

"Why"—Miss Gabriel plucked up her courage—"there was so much that afterwards, when we came to compare notes, neither of us could explain—as, for instance, who was the strange lady that walked into the room and was evidently surprised to see us, as we were naturally surprised to see her——-"

Mrs. Treacher turned slowly again to Mr. Pope, whose face (since this was the first he had heard of any strange lady) expressed no small astonishment.

"Poor man!" she murmured, sympathetically, "did they really go so far as all that?"

"I assure you—" began Mrs. Pope stammering.

"Oh, go your ways and take 'em home!" cut in Mrs. Treacher. "I'm a friend to my sex in most matters; but to come askin' me to back up such a tale as that, and for a shillin'!" She turned her palm over and let the coin drop on the soil at her feet.

But here unhappily, at the height of Mrs. Treacher's indignation, a sneeze sounded from a bush across the patch of garden; and the eyes of her visitors, attracted by the sound, rested on an object which Mrs. Treacher, by interposition of her shoulders, had been doing her best to hide—a scarecrow standing unashamed in the midst of the garrison potato patch—a scarecrow in a flaunting waistcoat of scarlet, green, and yellow!

"My antimacassar!" gasped Miss Gabriel.

"The Lord Pro—" Mr. Pope checked the exclamation midway. "You will excuse me, ma'am. I was referring to the lower part of the figure."

"Was ever such ingratitude?"

"It is worse, ma'am—ten times worse. You may call it sacrilege."



CHAPTER XV

BREFAR CHURCH

"It was all my fault," confessed Vashti.

"I was thinking so," said the Commandant, drily. "It had not occurred to me that Archelaus and the Treachers were acting on their own initiative."

Vashti laughed, and her laugh rippled over the waves to meet the sunset gold. They had taken boat beneath the Keg of Butter Battery, and were sailing for Saaron with a light breeze on their quarter. Evening and Sabbath calm held the sky from its pale yellow verges up to the zenith across which a few stray gulls were homing. From Garland Town, from St. Ann's, from Brefar ahead of them, came wafted the sound of bells, far and faint, ringing to church, and the murmuring water in the boat's wake seemed to take up Vashti's laugh and echo it reproachfully, as she checked herself with a glance at her companion's face, which also was reproachful and sternly set, but with a slight twitch at the corners of the mouth to betray it.

"Forgive me!" she pleaded, but her voice, too, betrayed her.

"You are not penitent in the least."

"As you are only pretending to be angry. Remember that I belong to the 'profession,' and no amateur acting can impose on me."

"You will admit that you have behaved abominably." The Commandant conceded a smile.

"Oh, abominably!"

"And perhaps you will be good enough to indicate how I am to restore my credit with—with those people. When I met them coming down the hill and pulled up to salute, Miss Gabriel froze me with a stare, Mrs. Pope looked the other way, and her husband could only muster up a furtive sort of grin. 'Excuse me,' it seemed to say; 'things may right themselves by and by, but for the present I cannot know you.' The three between them knocked me all of a heap. Of course I could not guess what had happened, but I made sure they had seen you."

"It was the closest miss that they did not. When they hove in sight I was actually standing in front of our masterpiece, with my back to the road; calling orders to Archelaus and Treacher, who were at work stuffing them (so to speak) with straw. I fancy they have forgotten, on Garrison Hill, to guard against surprises. At any rate, we should have been taken in a highly unsoldier-like fashion if Mrs. Treacher hadn't kept her eye lifting. She gave the alarm, and we scuttled into the bushes like rabbits, and watched while she held the gate. What is more, I believe she would have fended off the danger if Sergeant Archelaus hadn't sneezed; and then—oh, then!—" Vashti paused, her eyes brimful of laughter.

"He broke cover?"

"I snatched at the tail of his tunic—hastily, I will admit—but until he had stepped past me I had no idea he meant to be so foolish. It came away in my hand. They heard the noise it made in ripping."

"But they did not see you?"

"No; for seeing that the mischief was done Sergeant Treacher stepped out too. You should have heard them explaining to Miss Gabriel! But they were quite brave and determined. They told me afterwards that rather than allow one of the visitors to enter and catch sight of me they would have picked up all three and carried them outside the garrison gate."

"The Lord Proprietor will certainly hear of this," said the Commandant, musing.

Vashti, who had bent to pin the sheet closer, lifted her head and regarded him with a puzzled frown; then, averting her eyes, let them travel under the foot of the sail towards the sunset.

"Decidedly the Lord Proprietor will hear of it," she said, after an interval during which he almost forgot that he had spoken. "Indeed, if it will help to get you, or Archelaus, or anyone out of a scrape, I propose to call on him to-morrow and confess all. Do you think he will be lenient?"

There was a shade of contempt in the question, and it called a flush to the Commandant's cheek. He was about to answer, but checked himself and sat silent, looking down at the foam that ran by the boat's gunwale.

"He must be worth visiting, too; that is, if one may reconstruct him from—from them."

The Commandant smiled. "My dear lady, you have already made one attempt to reconstruct him from them."

Vashti pondered awhile, her chin resting on her hand and her eyes yet fixed upon the sunset.

"I give you fair warning that I am here on a holiday," she murmured.

"I don't know what you consider a fair warning; but I had guessed so much."

"The first for fifteen years," she pursued; "and I won't promise that I shall not behave worse—considerably worse. Are you very angry with me?"

"My dear," answered the Commandant ("My dear," it should be explained, is the commonest form of address in the Islands, and one that even a prisoner will use to the magistrate trying him), "if you really wish to know, I am enjoying myself recklessly; and it would be idle to call my garrison to put you under restraint, since you have already suborned them. I started, you see, with the imprudence of showing you my defences, and now you have us all at your mercy."

"You have been more than good to me," said Vashti, after a pause; "but the fortress is already vacated." She nodded towards a valise which rested under the thwart by the foot of the mast. "Mrs. Treacher packed it for me," she explained, "and her husband carried it down to the boat. If Ruth needs me—as she almost certainly does—and if her husband will tolerate me, I shall sleep on Saaron to-night."

"But you will come back?" he asked, dismayed.

"Certainly not, unless the Lord Proprietor drives me to seek refuge."

The Commandant did not answer. He had known that this happy time must be short; he had known it from the first, and that the end would come unexpectedly.

The wind had fallen slightly, and the boat crept up to the entrance of Cromwell's Sound with sail that alternately tautened its sheet and let it fall slack. The single bell of Brefar Church yet rung to service; but the sun had sunk beneath the horizon, and the sea-lights were flashing around the horizon before Saaron loomed close on the port hand; and as they crept towards the East Porth under the loom of the Island, a row-boat shot out from the beach there, and headed up the Sound towards Brefar.

"Hush!" commanded Vashti, and peered forward.

But a boat putting out from Saaron at this hour could only belong to Saaron's only inhabitants, and could be bound but on one errand. And Ruth was in her, for, presently, as the children's voices travelled back across the still water, Vashti heard Matthew Henry's pitched to a shrill interrogative and calling his mother by name.

"They are rowing to church, the whole family," said Vashti. "We can follow as slowly as we choose."

She listened a moment, but the oars in the boat ahead continued their regular plash. It may be that Tregarthen had failed to discern the small sail astern of him in the gloom of the land. She lowered it quietly, stowed it, found and inserted the thole-pins, and shipped the paddles. Yet it seemed that she was in no hurry to row. She but dipped a blade twice to check the boat from swinging broadside-on to the tide, and so rested silent for minute after minute, gazing through the gloom towards the bright sea-lights.

And it seemed to the Commandant, seated and watching her, that he could read some of the thoughts behind her gaze. His own went back again to the night of his first coming to the Islands, when, as at sunset he supposed himself to have discovered them, all of a sudden they discovered him—reef after reef opening a great shining eye upon him; and some of the eyes were steady, but most of them intermittent, and all sent long gleaming rays along the floor of the sea; a dozen sea-lights and eleven of them yellow, but the twelfth (that upon North Island) a deep glowing crimson. Since then and for fifteen years they had been his friends. Nightly he watched them for minutes from his window before undressing for bed; and in fanciful moments they seemed to draw a circle of witchcraft around the Islands.

If they meant so much to him what must they mean to her who had left home, dear ones, and all memories of youth?—and who, returned from exile, stood with her hand upon the latch of the old cupboard!

"Ruth will have changed," said Vashti, speaking aloud, but to herself. "It is impossible that she has not changed."

She dipped her paddles and began to pull, gently at first and almost languidly; but by and by strength came into her arms and the boat began to move at a pace that astonished the Commandant.

* * * * *

Brefar Church stands on a green knoll close by the water's edge and only a few yards above a shingly beach where the Islanders bring their boats to shore. Its bell had ceased ringing long before its windows came into view with the warm lamp light shining within; and the beach lay dark under the shadow of the tamarisks topping the graveyard wall. Vashti, not in the least distressed by her exertions, sprang ashore and sought about for a good mooring-stone. She had found one almost before the Commandant, following, could offer to help her in her search. Together they hauled the boat a few yards up from the water.

"Are we to go inside?" the Commandant asked, looking up at the lighted building.

Before Vashti could answer a reedy harmonium sounded within and the congregation broke into the "Old Hundredth" hymn—

"All people that on earth do dwell, Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice——"

The incongruity of it, sung by a handful of fisherfolk here on an islet of the Atlantic—the real congruity (if indeed the Church be, as the Bidding Prayer defines it, "the whole body of Christian people dispersed throughout the world")—was probably less perceptible to the Commandant after fifteen years' sojourn on the Islands than to Vashti, newly returned from great continents and crowded cities. But if she smiled the darkness did not betray her. The Commandant saw her lift a hand beckoning him to follow, and followed her up the knoll to a whitewashed gate glimmering between the dark masses of the tamarisks.

She opened it and disappeared into the churchyard. He followed, stumbling along the narrow path, and overtook her at the angle of the south porch. She was in the act of mounting upon a flat tombstone which lay close in the wall's shadow. A panel of light streamed from the window directly above, and fell on Vashti's face as she drew herself erect upon the slab and leaned forward, her fingers resting on the granite mullions; but a light not derived from this shone in her eyes a moment later. With a little sob of joy she pressed her forehead close against the leaded panes.

The Commandant heard the sound, and guessed the cause of it. The light in her eyes he could not see. He stood among the dark nettles, looking up at her, waiting for the hymn to conclude.

The "Amen" came at last. He heard the shuffling of feet as the congregation knelt to pray ... and, with that, Vashti turned and bent to whisper to him.

"She is there—almost abreast of us, standing by the pillar. She is kneeling now—my own Ruth—and her face is hidden."

He supposed that she bent to step down from the slab, and he put up a hand to help her. A tear fell on the back of his fingers, as it were a single raindrop out of the night.... But she turned impulsively, and pressed her face again to the glass.

"She is praying. She will not look up again.... She would not turn her eyes just now, though her own sister stood so close! They were lifted to the lights in the chancel and to the dark window." Then, as it seemed, with sudden inconsequence, she added: "Forgive me, sir! You have been kind to me, and it is so many years—so many years——"

"My dear," said the Commandant, gravely, as he handed her down, "you honour me more than I can tell. All my life I shall remember that you have so honoured me."

But it did not appear that she heard him. Letting go his hand, she seated herself on the edge of the tombstone, and looked up at him with eyes that, barely touched by the light from the window, seemed to him strangely, almost pitifully childish—eyes of a child that had lost its mother young.

"Her face was not changed, or a very little; far less than I feared. She is beautiful, my own Ruth—beautiful as she is good."

"And happy?" he found himself asking.

"Happy and unhappy. Happy in her good man, in her children?—oh, yes. But unhappy, just now, because they are unhappy and in trouble. There was a gloom upon Eli Tregarthen's face, a look of pain——"

"Of anger, too, and of wonder mixed with it, I daresay. He has been hit by a blow he does not understand."

"But we will help them."

The Commandant stared into the darkness. There was gloom, too, on his face, had there been light enough to reveal it.

"The Lord Proprietor is a very obstinate man."

"Yes, yes; but I mean that we will help them to-night. I cannot bear to think of Ruth carrying her trouble home and lying awake with it."

"Perhaps she will not." The Commandant remembered how he himself had carried a burden to church that morning and left it there.

"Ah!" exclaimed Vashti, swiftly, guessing his thought, though not the occasion of it. "That may do for you and me. For my part, I am not a religious woman—I mean, not religious as I ought to be. Yet I understand. Often and often when worried or out of temper I go to church and sit there alone until peace of mind comes back to me. But I have no husband, and you no wife; whereas with Ruth all her soul's comfort is bound up in those she loves. While Eli Tregarthen wears that look on his face, she can never go home happy."

"But have we power to lift it?"

"We will try, and to-night."

She stood up, cast one look behind her at the lighted window, and led the way back along the path, through the gate, and down the knoll to the beach. While she cast off the rope from its mooring-stone he eased the boat off and launched her.

"Shall I take the paddles?" he asked.

No; Vashti would pull back as she had come; and as she pulled she talked of Ruth, out of her full heart. He listened, between joy and pain—joy to be sitting here, honoured with her confidences, though he had none but a listener's share in them—here, in the still, scented evening, caressed by her marvellous voice; and pain, not because her talk charged life full of new meanings, every one of which he felt to be vitally true and as certainly missed by his own starved experience, but because it took him for granted as a kindly stranger, an outsider admitted to these mysteries, and warned him that his time on this holy ground was short; nay, that it was drawing swiftly to a close. And how could he go back to the old monotony, the old routine?

He remembered that, to whatever he went back, it would not be to these—at any rate, not for long. The future might hold degradation, poverty of the sharpest, hard work for a pittance of daily bread; but at least his dismissal would send him back to a life in which lay somewhere these meanings that trembled like visions of light in the heart of Vashti's talk. They gave him glimpses of the heaven which, by their remembered rays, he must seek for himself. How many years had he wasted—how many years!

They moored the boat close under the cliff's shadow, and, climbing the rocks, between the cove and the East Porth, sat down to wait. Vashti sat in reverie, plucking and smelling at small tufts of the thyme; then, rousing herself with a happy laugh, she challenged the Commandant to name her all the islets, rock by rock, lying out yonder in the darkness. He tried, and she corrected omission after omission, mocking him. What did he care? It was enough to be seated here, close with her in the starry, odorous night.

Presently she tired of the contest, and clasping her knees began, without warning given, to croon a little song—

"Over the rim of the moor, And under a starry sky, Two men came to my door And rested them wearily.

Beneath the bough and the star In a whispering foreign tongue, They talked of a land afar, And the merry days so young."

She sang it as though to herself, or as though answering the murmur of the tide on the rocks at their feet; but at the third verse her voice lifted:

"Beneath the dawn and the bough I heard them arise and go— But my heart, it is aching—aching now, For the more it will never know."

The song died away in a low wistful minor, as though it breathed its last upon a question. "The merry days—the merry days, so young," she echoed, after a pause, and lifted her head suddenly.

"Hark!"

The sound—it was the plash of oar—grew upon the darkness. A light shot out beyond the last point of Brefar, and its ray fell waving on the black water. It came from a lantern in the bows of the Tregarthen's boat, and as it drew nearer the two listeners could distinguish the children's voices.

They shrank back there in the shadow above the ledge, as the boat took ground and Eli Tregarthen, stepping ashore in his sea-boots, set the lantern on the stones of the beach, lifted out the children, and lent a hand to Ruth. The little ones scampered up the path; but Ruth waited by her husband while he heaved the boat high and dry with his easy, careless strength, and saw to her moorings. When all was done, and as he stooped to pick up the lantern, she came to him, and put a hand on his arm. So, and without speech, they went up the path together.

The rays of the lantern danced on the furze-bushes to right and left of the path.... Vashti leapt to her feet; her hands went up to her lips and hollowed themselves to a low call.

"Lul—lul—loo—ee!"

From the brake above came a little cry, a little gasping cry; and gruffly upon it Eli Tregarthen's voice challenged—

"Who goes there?"

"Caa-ra! caa-ra!... Oh, Ruth—my sister!"

The Commandant saw Tregarthen's lantern lifted above the gorse, and by the light of it Ruth came down to the narrow pathway—came with the face of a ghost, as Vashti sprang up the slope towards her.

"Vassy! Not Vassy!——-"

But Vashti's arms were about her for proof. The Commandant, standing below in the shadow of the brake, heard the younger sister's sobs.

"Vassy! And to-night!"

"To-night, and for many nights——-"

"Thank God! Thank God!"

The Commandant, by the light of the lantern which Eli Tregarthen held stupidly, saw them go up the path, their arms holding each other's waist. They disappeared, but their questions and eager, broken answers, as they climbed towards Saaron, came down to him where he stood alone, forgotten.

He stood there for half an hour almost. Then, as he felt the chill of the night he recalled himself to action with a shiver, and shouldered Vashti's valise. Slowly he climbed the hill with it, to Saaron Farm, and rapped on the door.

Tregarthen opened to him, staring.

"I have brought your sister-in-law's luggage."

"Is it the Governor?... But won't you step inside, sir?"

"I thank you; no. It is late," answered the Commandant, curtly, and turned on his heel.

As he went by the window he saw—he could not help seeing—Ruth in her chair, with Vashti on the hearth beside her, clasping her knees. The children looked on in a wondering semi-circle.

He stumbled down the hill, and as he went he heard the door softly close behind him.



CHAPTER XVI

THE LORD PROPRIETOR'S AUDIENCE

Sir Caesar Hutchins, Lord Proprietor, paced the terrace of his great house at Inniscaw, and paused ever and anon to survey the prospect with a lordly proprietary eye. He had breakfasted, and at breakfast (to use his own words) he always did himself justice. Indeed, throughout a strenuous business career he had never failed to take very good care of himself, and was now able to enjoy a clear conscience with an easy digestion.

The reader may ask with some surprise how such a man, accustomed all his life to the bustle and traffic of Finsbury Pavement, E. C., could choose, in his middle age, to turn his back on these and purchase an exile out in the Atlantic, where no one bought or sold shares, and where only Mr. Fossell, perhaps—and he from a week-old newspaper—caught an echo of the world's markets, whether they rose or fell. But, in truth, Sir Caesar had chosen carefully, deliberately. He had always intended to enjoy in later life the wealth for which he had worked hard in his prime; and as soon as his fortune was assured, he had made several cautious but determined experiments to discover where enjoyment might abide. He had, for instance, rented a grouse-moor, and invited a large company to help him, by shooting the birds, to feel that he was getting a return for his money. But somehow his guests, though very good fellows in London, did not harmonize (to his mind) with the highland wastes. He was glad when they departed; the scenery improved at once—at any rate, he took more pleasure in it. He tried a deer forest and found this tolerable, but he soon made the further discovery that shooting bored him, that is to say, all shooting of higher rank that the potting of rabbits. He was one of those enviable persons who "know what they like." If he made trial of these expensive recreations, it was simply because he saw men ambitious for them, and supposed they would certainly yield some gratification to explain it; but, having made trial for himself and missed the gratification, he abandoned them without a sigh. Hence his wardrobe had come to include a pair of deer-stalking breeches, very little the worse for wear. (He had never anticipated any satisfaction in wearing a kilt).

At another time he had owned a steam yacht; and this had taught him that he liked the sea and suffered no inconvenience from its motion. But from the yacht itself he derived small satisfaction after he had shown it to his friends, and been envied by poorer men for possessing such a toy. It might have been amusing to carry these admirers about with him in extended cruises; but they, being poor, were busy and could not afford the time, while his rich acquaintances owned steam yachts of their own. Moreover, though unaccustomed to sport, he had always taken a fair amount of exercise; his liver required it; and at yachting—that is to say, sitting on deck in a comfortable chair—he put on flesh at an alarming rate. Therefore, from this pastime also he retired.

Though these experiments were in themselves uniformly unsuccessful, he had not made them in vain; but, keeping his wits about him, had arrived by a process of exhaustion at some of the essentials of pleasure; and this, after all, was not so bad for a man who had started with no knowledge concerning it and with a deal of false information. He knew now that he required exercise, that he could be happy in solitude, and that his landscape would be all the better if it neighboured on the sea. (Of his immunity from sea-sickness he was honestly prouder than of anything his money had been able, as yet, to purchase.) He had scarcely made these discoveries when the lease of the Islands came into the market.

Then, as he read the advertisement in the Times newspaper, in a flash he had divined his opportunity, had seen a happy future unrolled before him. His error hitherto had lain, not in exchanging Finsbury Pavement for scenes where the free elements had play, but in seeking to change himself and do violence to his own habits of mind and body. In the Islands he could practice, as a benevolent despot, that mastery of men which had given him power in the city; he could devote uncontradicted to the cause of philanthropy—or with only so much contradiction as lent a spice to triumph—those faculties which he had been sharpening all his life in quest of money. They remained sharp as ever, though the old appetite had been dulled.

He was a widower. He had no ambition but his own to consult; he alone would suffer if he made a mistake—and he felt sure he was not making a mistake. Though not given to day-dreams (Finsbury Pavement discouraged him), he had an ounce of imagination distributed about his brain (few, even among money-making men, succeed with less), and it had once or twice occurred to him that a king's must be, in spite of drawbacks, a highly enviable lot—at any rate in countries west of Russia. Well, here was his chance.

He took it boldly; and to-day, had you asked him, he would have acknowledged with a smile that he did not repent. All kings, to be sure, have their worries. The army had not shown itself too well affected towards the new reign. But when an army consists of three soldiers....

The Lord Proprietor, gazing down from his terrace upon the twinkling waters of the roadstead, caught sight of a row-boat coming across from St. Lide's, and as it drew near, recognised its sole occupant for Sergeant Archelaus.

He felt for his cigar case, chose and lit a cigar, and rested his elbows on the balustrade of the terrace, watching, while the old man brought his boat to the landing-quay, landed leisurely, and crossed the meadow to the foot of the gardens, where, at the pace he was keeping, one might allow him a couple of minutes at least before he re-emerged into view at the foot of the steps leading up to the terrace. But, as it happened, a bare fifty seconds elapsed before he came darting out of the boscage and scrambled up the stairway in a sweating hurry, two steps at a time.

"You shouldn't, Sergeant; you really shouldn't—at your time of life," expostulated the Lord Proprietor, kindly, withdrawing the cigar from his mouth.

"Then you shouldn't keep ostriches," retorted Sergeant Archelaus, as he gained the topmost step and, after a fearful glance behind him, sank against a pilaster and mopped his brow.

"Take care of that urn!" cried the Lord Proprietor, in a warning voice. "It contains a Phormium tenax that I wouldn't lose on any account."

"A what?"

"A New Zealand Flax.... The ostriches chased you, did they?"

"They did—the pair of 'em. It goes against a man's stomach, too, being chased by a bird."

"To me," said the Lord Proprietor, "it is gratifying evidence that they are recovering their spirits, which were hipped after the long voyage from Cape Town. But here, in the Gulf Stream, my theory is that we can acclimatise almost anything, animal or vegetable. Already they begin to feel its invigorating influence."

"Talking of vegetables, sir"—Archelaus shifted a canvas bag from his shoulders to the ground and began to untie the string which bound its neck.

"Pray take breath," suggested the Lord Proprietor. "At your age—and with the little exercise you get on Garrison Hill——"

"We don't keep ostriches," said Archelaus, curtly. "But, talking of vegetables, the Governor sends his compliments to you, sir, and begs your acceptance of a few choice plants in return for the small clothes you lent me."

"'Lent' you, Archelaus? 'Gave,' you mean."

"Oh, sir, but—excuse me—I couldn't—there was them ostriches to be considered."

"It has occurred to me," went on the Lord Proprietor, who was in the best of moods this morning, "that those—er—breeches might be a trifle conspicuous—a shade too highly pronounced in pattern—to be worn with uniform."

"As for that, sir," answered Archelaus, tactfully, "life on the Islands isn't like active service, where a man has to be careful about exposing himself to marksmanship."

"In Inverness a pattern like that would excite no comment."

"I've never been there," said Archelaus.

"It—er—harmonises, as it were, with the natural surroundings: with the loch, the glen, the strath. So with those curious tartans to which the Scottish highlanders are—er—addicted. Seen by themselves, and to a sensitive, artistic eye, they appear crude and almost violent in their contrast of colours; but seen in conjunction with the expanse of native moorland, the undulating stretches of the heather——"

"'Tis but niggling scenery we have in these parts, to be sure," agreed Archelaus.

"I have sometimes thought that mutatis mutandis the same may be true of the bagpipes, the strains of which—'skirl,' I believe, is the proper expression—are not altogether discordant with the moaning of the wind over those desolate moors or the cries uttered by their wilder denizens; though, speaking personally, I never could endure the instrument."