"Handier. But you are wrong in suspecting Tregarthen; that is, unless you have good tangible evidence."

"I don't say that it amounts to much, but it's tangible. In fact, his boat is lying here, just now, close under the Keg of Butter."

The Commandant turned on his heel and took a pace or two towards the window, to hide his perturbation and give himself time to consider.... Vashti's boat! And Vashti on the premises at this moment! What was to be done? How on earth could he get her away?

"You discovered this yourself?" he found himself asking.

"No; I happened to be in the Watch House with the chief boatman checking the store-sheets, when Beesley, whose watch it is, came in and reported. I see what you're driving at. Your own boat is lying under the Keg of Butter, as everybody knows, and you suggest that I am duffer enough to mistake her in the darkness for a boat at least two-foot longer."

Mr. Rogers laughed good-naturedly.

"But the answer is," he went on, "that Beesley found two boats lying there; and Beesley, who knows every craft in the Islands, swears that the one belongs to you no more certainly than the other to Farmer Tregarthen. Moreover, she was moored on a shore line, and we pulled her in and examined her. Sure enough we found name and owner's name cut on her transom—'Two Sisters: E. Tregarthen.' Now, what d'you make of it?"

"Very little," answered the Commandant, recovering himself; "and that little in all likelihood quite innocent. Someone, we'll say, wishes to cross over from Saaron to St. Lide's this evening—on any simple errand, say to fetch a parcel from the steamer. Why shouldn't that someone, knowing the Keg of Butter to be good shelter with plenty of water at all tides, have landed and left the boat there?"

Mr. Rogers shook his head. "Why there, and not at the pier? The pier lies almost a mile nearer, and there's a fair wind—or almost a fair one—for returning; while from the Keg of Butter no one can fetch Saaron under a couple of tacks. That's my first point. Secondly, if Eli Tregarthen has honest business here, whether with the steamer to fetch a parcel (parcels must be running in your head to-night), or in the town to fetch a doctor, the pier is obviously his landing-place. Why, there isn't a house in the Island, barring these Barracks, that doesn't stand half-a-mile nearer the pier; not to mention that landing at the Keg of Butter involves a perfectly unnecessary climb up one side of Garrison Hill and down the other. Lastly, my dear sir, look at the time! Close on eleven o'clock, and all Garland Town in their beds. Again, I ask what honest business can Eli Tregarthen have here at such an hour?"

The Commandant felt himself cornered. An insane hope crossed his mind that, while the Lieutenant sat talking, Vashti had contrived to slip out of the house and down to the shore. It was followed by a saner one, that she had done nothing of the sort; for, to a certainty, the boat would be guarded.

"You have taken precautions?" he asked, and felt himself flushing at the dishonesty of the question.

"I have posted Beesley in charge, and sent the chief boatman off to the pier-head to keep a close watch on the steamer. She sails at seven-thirty to-morrow, and though I never heard a hint against her skipper, it's only right to be careful. I've amused myself before now, planning imaginary frauds on the revenue; and if anyone cares to risk opening up that game afresh, the Islands still give him a-plenty of openings."

"Yes, yes," agreed the Commandant, and checked a groan. He had thought of warning Vashti to slip down to the quay and borrow a boat there without asking leave. Some explanation might be trumped up on the morrow—as that the wind was foul for returning from the Keg of Butter. No one would accuse Eli Tregarthen of borrowing a boat with intent to steal: his taking it would be no more than a neighbourly liberty.

But, with the chief boatman watching the pier-head, she would be discovered to a certainty.

The Commandant's last hope was gone.

Just as he realised this, to his utter astonishment, he heard the voice of Archelaus grumbling outside in the passage. And Archelaus had gone to rest an hour ago!

"Pretty time of night this, to come breaking a man's rest!" growled the voice of Archelaus, audibly, and not without viciousness, as though he meant it to be heard.

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Mr. Rogers. "You don't tell me we've roused the old fellow out of bed? And I reckoned I was making no more noise than a mouse!"

"He may have heard you throw that gravel against the pane." The Commandant took a step towards the door, but halted irresolutely.

"Then he's a light sleeper," commented Mr. Rogers, "and an even more dilatory dresser. Why, good heavens!"—the Lieutenant started up from his chair—"he's undoing the bolts! Somebody's at the front door: one of my men to report, I'll bet a fiver!"

He would have rushed out into the passage, but the Commandant caught him by the arm.

"No need to hurry, my friend! Whoever it is, Archelaus will bring word."

Many hasty surmises whirled together in the Commandant's brain—the first, and hastiest, that Vashti, unable to make her escape, had aroused Archelaus, and that Archelaus was unbarring the door for her on the pretence of hearing a knock. Even so, she would be caught as soon as she reached the shore. Still, occasion might be snatched to send Archelaus after her to warn her; she might hide for the night at the Castle under Mrs. Treacher's friendly wing. The instant need was to hold back the Lieutenant from discovering her in the passage, and to the Lieutenant's arm our Commandant clung.

"My good sir," expostulated Mr. Rogers, "it must be one of my men. Who else, at this hour?"

He fell back a step as the door opened.

"A person to see you, sir; from Saaron!" announced Archelaus. "Shall I show her in?"

Before either could answer, Vashti herself stood on the threshold.

Of the two men, the Lieutenant excusably showed the blankest astonishment. But the Commandant had to catch at the rail of a chair. Vashti had discarded her cloak of furs, and faced him now in such garb as is worn by the poorest in the Islands: a short gown of hodden gray, coarse-knitted stockings, and stout shoes. Across her shoulder, for a "turn-over," she wore a faded shawl of Tartan pattern. (The Commandant recognised it for a surplus one which Mrs. Treacher kept in the Barracks kitchen, to wear "against the draughts" on occasions when she helped Archelaus with the cooking.) But most wonderful of all was her hair. By some swift art the heavy coil had been drawn into two flat bands, brought low over the forehead, and carried back over the ears in a fashion almost slatternly. By no art could Vashti conceal that she was beautiful. She was also too wise to attempt it. But, for the rest, she had transformed herself.

"If you please, sir," she began timidly, with an Island curtsey, and paused as if uncertain, at sight of Mr. Rogers, whether to hold her ground or to flee: "If you please, sir, I be that frightened!"

Accent, intonation—both were perfect, of the true Island speech, that delicate incommunicable sing-song. The Commandant's eyes grew rounder yet with amazement, and Vashti—afraid, perhaps, of meeting them—flung a glance of mock terror behind her, as though she had caught the footfall of a pursuer.

"But—but who in the world—" stammered Mr. Rogers.

"If you please, gentlemen"—she turned, with another quick curtsey—"my name is Vazzy Cara, and I come from Saaron. I live there with my sister, Ruth, that is wife to Eli Tregarthen——"

Mr. Rogers gave a low whistle.

"It's true, sir—true as I stand here! The Governor knows me, and will bear me out—won't you, sir?... A terrible way from Saaron it is, and at this hour of night.... But ask the Governor, sir, and he'll tell you I am a respectable woman; sister to Mrs. Tregarthen, and lives with her to look after the children."

"Yes, yes," interrupted the Lieutenant, losing patience. "But the question is, how you came here, and why?"

Vashti stood panting. By the heave of her bosom it was plain to see that either her fears still possessed her or that she had been running for dear life, and must catch breath. Her hand went up to her bodice.

"I came, sir, to see the Governor—all the way across from Saaron. Eli—that's my sister's husband—is in terrible trouble over there, because the Lord Proprietor means to turn him off his farm. Yes, say!"—she drew a letter from her bodice, and went on with rising voice. "Turn us out he will, though the Tregarthens have lived on the Island ever since Saaron was Saaron. The Governor, here, in his time would never have done such wickedness, nor suffered it, being a just gentleman and merciful, as all the folk can bear witness. And so, thinks I, he may be able to help us yet; and if able he will be willing."

She held out the letter towards the Commandant, who took it and turned it over vaguely between his fingers, not opening it, nor daring to meet her eyes.

"And so," continued Mr. Rogers, "you took your brother-in-law's boat—without his knowledge——"

Vashti nodded. "Yes, sir; I took it unbeknowns. He's a very quiet man, is my sister's husband, and don't like it that other folks, 'specially women, should mix themselves up in his affairs."

"Then he's a sensible fellow as well as a quiet one."

"Yes, sir." Vashti took the correction meekly, with downcast look.

"And still less, I'll bet," Mr. Rogers continued, "would he be pleased to know that one of his woman-kind was straying across to St. Lide's at this hour of the night."

"Oh, sir," she caught him up, "but that's where I've been hindered! For, wishing to have word with the Governor, and no one the wiser, I brought the boat to shore down yonder, under the Keg of Butter, and there the coastguards have found it, and are waiting by it to catch me, and what answer to give them I can't think, nor how to account for myself. Seemin' to me they're everywhere, and all around me in the darkness!"

Mr. Rogers broke into a laugh. "It appears, Commandant, that I have found a mare's nest; always supposing that this tale is a true one. You'll excuse me, ma'am, but service is service."

The Commandant had turned to his writing-table, and was holding the letter under the lamplight.

"I can go bail for Miss Cara," he answered, but without looking up. "Undoubtedly she comes from Saaron, and is Mrs. Tregarthen's sister. Also this letter, though we cannot deal with it to-night, is addressed to Eli Tregarthen in the Lord Proprietor's handwriting. It gives him formal notice to quit and deliver up his farm. I can give no hope of help—no hope at all." Here his voice trembled slightly. "The most I can promise is to consider it."

"And the best we can do for the moment is to escort Miss Cara down to her boat and get one of my men to sail her back to her island."

"I incline to think," said the Commandant, after a pause, "that Miss Cara—from what I have seen of her skill—is competent to sail back alone. If not, I would suggest that you or I escort her, towing my boat across for the return journey. In any case, if we can get your men out of the way, it would be wiser, perhaps, for her sake."

"And for mine, begad!" agreed the Lieutenant! "Else I shall have every man of them grinning behind my back for a month of Sundays. 'Rogers' smuggling-chase'—I can hear the villains chuckling over it.... But I say, though"—he turned on Vashti admiringly—"you'll want an escort across, eh? You don't tell me you're man enough to handle that boat alone?"

"If you please, sir."

"The Channel's none too easy on a dark night."

Vashti smiled. "My father taught it to me, sir, before I was ten years old. I could sail it blindfold."

"And you have the nerve?... And yet just now, the dark frightened you, and you ran for your life!"

"No," said Vashti, demurely, "I just stood still."

"Well, come along! And when you get to the Battery, you'll have to stand still again, and wait until I report the coast clear. Commandant, will you give Miss Cara your arm, while I run ahead."

They stepped out together into the night. Vashti neither took the Commandant's arm nor spoke to him, even after Mr. Rogers had passed ahead out of earshot. Only when the pair had reached the dark battery, and were waiting there on the dark platform above the sea, she turned to him and asked—

"Shall you be busy to-morrow?"

"I am never busy."

"I have left my cloak and the guitar with Archelaus."

"I will bring them to Saaron to-morrow."

She turned away and leaned over the low parapet to the left. Some way below a footfall sounded, on the track leading to the watch-house—-the footfall of Beesley. A stone, dislodged by his tread, trickled and fell over the cliff into night.

* * * * *

"Curious!" remarked Mr. Rogers, confidentially, to the Commandant, twenty minutes later, as they stood and peered into the darkness after Vashti's boat. "Here I am, stuck on these Islands (so to speak) with a telescope held to my eye. Of the folk upon 'em I see next to nothing. Now, I don't know if you took note of it, but that's a remarkable looking woman; a remarkably handsome woman; and I've spent these years here without guessing that such a woman existed hereabouts. Eh?" Mr. Rogers relapsed into mild facetiousness. "If you were a younger man, Commandant, I could hatch up a pretty story out of to-night's doings—and if I didn't mind a laugh against myself."



CHAPTER XXII

PIPER'S HOLE

Annet, Linnet, and Matthew Henry sat side by side on the granite roller by the gate and watched their friend Jan eat his mid-morning snack—or "mungey," as it is called in the Islands. It consisted, as a rule, of a crust of bread, but Jan had supplemented it to-day with a turnip, which he cut into slices with his pocket-knife. He had been pulling turnips since six o'clock. "And I reckon this'll be the last time of askin'," he commented, letting his eyes wander over the field as he seated himself on a shaft of the cart, which had been brought to await the loading.

The children knew that they would soon be quitting Saaron, and that the prospect distressed their father and mother. They had discussed it, and agreed together that it was a great shame to be turned out of their home, and that the Lord Proprietor must be a hard-hearted tyrant; but secretly they looked forward to the change with a good deal of excitement, not being of an age to fathom the troubles of grown-up folk. After all, Brefar lay close at hand and was familiar. Brefar was populous, and across there they would find many playmates. Brefar, too, held out great promise of adventure after sea-birds' eggs and expeditions of discovery; and if ever the home-sickness came upon them they would cross the sands at low-water and revisit the old haunts and the deserted house. All these consolations, however, they kept to themselves. It would never do to abandon the family grievance merely because it presented a bright side. They felt, as older folks have been known to feel, that a sense of injury carries with it a sense of importance.

"I wonder," said Linnet, severely, "that you can have the heart to talk about it, Jan."

"Jan has no feelings about leaving Saaron," said Annet, more in sorrow than in anger. "Why should he—coming from the mainland?"

"But Jan was born on the Islands," Matthew Henry objected; "and that will be a long time ago."

"Silly! As if you could belong to the Islands by being born here! Why, to belong to them, your father and mother must have been Islanders, and your grandfathers and grandmothers, and right back into the greats and great-greats. And then you never want to go away or live anywhere else in the world."

Matthew Henry pursed up his small mouth dubiously. He himself had sometimes wished to live in the wilds of America, or on a South Sea Island; even to visit Australia and have a try at walking upside down. There must be a flaw in Annet's argument somewhere.

"But if Jan comes from the mainland—" he began.

"Cornwall," said Jan, tranquilly, his mouth full of raw turnip.

"Then you ought to want to go back to it."

"I mean to, one of these fine days."

"I shouldn't put it off too long, if I were you," advised Linnet, candidly. "You're getting up in years, and the next thing you'll be dead."

"But didn't your father ever want to go back?" asked Matthew Henry, sticking to his point.

"No fear."

"Why?"

"Because, if he'd showed his face back in Cornwall, they'd have hanged him; that's all."

"Oh!" exclaimed the three, almost simultaneously, and sat for a moment or two gazing on Jan in awed silence.

"But why should they want to hang your father?" asked Annet.

Jan sliced his bread with an air of noble indifference. "Eh? Why, indeed? He used to say 'twas for being too frolicsome. He never done no wrong—not what you might call wrong: or so he maintained, an' 'twasn't for me to disbelieve 'en. Was it, now?"

"You'll tell us about it, Jan dear?" coaxed Annet.

"There's no particular story in it." (The children put this aside; it was Jan's formula for starting a tale.) "My father, in his young days, lived at a place in Cornwall called Luxulyan, and arned his wages as a tinner at a stream-work——"

"What is a stream-work?" asked Matthew Henry.

"A stream-work is a moor beside a river, where the mud is full of ore, washed down from the country above—sometimes from the old mines. The streamers dig this mud up and wash it through sieves, and so they get the tin. There was enough of it, my father said, in Luxulyan Couse to keep a captain and twelve men in good wages and pay for a feast once a year at the Rising Sun Public House. The supper took place some time in the week before Christmas, and they called it Pie-crust Night, though I can't tell you why. Well, one Pie-crust Night, after this yearly supper—the most enjoyable he had ever known—my father left the Rising Sun towards midnight, and started to walk to his home in Luxulyan Churchtown. He had a fair dollop of beer inside of him, but nothing (as he ever maintained), to excuse what followed, and he got so far as Tregarden Down without accident. Now, this Tregarden Down, as he always described it to me, is a lonesome place given over to brackenfern and strewn about with great granite boulders, and on one of these boulders my father sat down, because the night was clear and a fancy had come into his head to count the stars. He sat there staring up and counting till he reached twenty score, and with that he felt he was getting a crick in the back of his neck, and brought his eyes down to earth again. It seemed to him that, even in the dark, a change had come over the down since he'd been sittin' there, and the whole lie of the ground had a furrin look. Hows'ever, he hadn't much time to puzzle about this, for lo and behold! as he stared about him, what should he see under the lew of the next rock but a party of little people, none of 'em more than a thumb high, dancing in a ring upon the turf! They broke off and laughed as soon as my father caught sight of 'em; and, says one little whipper-snapper, stepping forward and pulling off his cap with a bow, 'Good evening, my man!' 'Sir to you!' says my father. 'There's a good liquor at the Rising Sun,' says the little man. 'None better,' says my father. 'I know by a deal better,' says the little man. 'Would you like to taste it?' 'Would I not?' says my father. 'Well, then,' says the little man, 'there's a shipfull of wine gone ashore early this night on Par Sands, and maybe the Par folk haven't had time yet to clear the cargo. What d'ee say to Ho! and away for Par Beach! Eh?' 'With all the pleasure in life,' says my father, thinkin' it a joke; so 'Ho! and away for Par Beach!' he calls out, mimicking the little man. The words weren't scarcely out of his mouth before a wind seemed to catch him up, though gently, from his seat on the boulder, and in two twinklings he was standin' on Par Sands. There was a strong sea running, and out beyond the edge of the tide my father spied a ship breaking up. But if she broke up fast, her cargo was meltin' faster, for a whole crowd of folk had gathered on the sands, and were rolling the casks of wine up from the water and carting them away for dear life. My father and the little people couldn't much as ever lay hands on a solitary one, and, what was worse they hadn't but fairly broached it before a cry went up that the Preventive men were coming. Sure enough, my father, pricking up his ears, could hear horses gallopin' down along the road above the sands. 'Dear, dear!' says the little man, 'this is a most annoyin' thing to happen! But luckily I know a place where there's better liquor still, and no risk of bein' interrupted. So Ho! and away for Squire Tremayne's cellar!'

"'Ho! and away for Squire Tremayne's cellar!' called out my father; and the next thing he knew he found himself in the cellar of Squire Tremayne's great house at Heligan, knocking around with the small people among casks of wine and barrels of beer galore. To do him justice, he never pretended he didn't make use of the occasion. In fact, he fuddled himself so that when the little gentleman called out 'Ho! and away! for the next randivoo' (whatever that might ha' been), he missed to take up the catchword, bein' asleep belike. So there the piskies left him asleep, with his head in a waste saucer and his mouth under the drip of a spigot; and there the butler found him the next morning, knocking his shins among the butts and barrels in the darkness, and calling out to know what the dickens had taken Tregarden Down and the rocks o't, that they grew so pesky close together. The butler haled him upstairs to the Squire, and the Squire heard his story, and not only said he didn't believe a word o't, but (bein' a magistrate) packed him off to Bodmin Jail for burglary. I don't blame the man altogether," said Jan, reflectively; "for, come to think of it, my father's account of himself lay a bit off the ordinary run, and belike he wasn't in any condition to put it clearly.

"At any rate, to jail he went, and from jail he was delivered up to the Judges at Assize, and the Judges sentenced my poor father to death, which was the punishment for burglary in those times, and, for all I know, it may be the same on the mainland to this day.

"The morning came when he was to be put out of the world; and, as I needn't tell you, it gathered a great crowd together, to have a look at the last of a man that had so little sense of wickedness as to take liberties with a gentleman's wine and spirits. There my poor father stood under the gallows-tree with none to befriend 'en, when all of a sudden he heard a shouting up the street, and down along it, through the crowd, came a strange little lady, holding up her hand and a paper in it. The folk opened way respectful-like, seein' by the better-most air of her that she belonged to one of the gentry, and along she came to the scaffold. 'Good mornin', ma'am, and what can I do for you?' says the Sheriff, steppin' forward, with a lift of his hat. He held out a hand for the paper; but the little lady turns to my father, and pipes out in a little voice, very clear and sweet, 'Ho! and away for the Islands!' Glad enough was my father to hear the sound of it. 'Ho! and away for the Islands!' he answers, pat; and in two twinks he and the little lady were off in the sky like a puff of smoke, and the crowd left miles below. The next thing he knew he was sittin' on a rock, over yonder in Inniscaw, by the mouth of Piper's Hole, and starin' at the sea. So he picks himself together and walks up to North Inniscaw Farm (as 'twas called in those days), and there he took service and married and lived steady ever after. Leastways——"

"Leastways," said a voice at the gate, "he gave over drinking except when his master ran a cargo of brandy, and he never gave his wife trouble but once, when he took home a mermaid and made the good soul jealous."

"Aunt Vazzy!" cried the children. "Why, how long have you been standin' there?"

"Long enough to hear the end of the story, and how Jan's father came to the Islands through Piper's Hole."

"But," Linnet objected, "Jan didn't say that his father came through Piper's Hole; only that he found himself on the rocks in front of it. They came through the air, he and the little lady, didn't they, Jan?"

Jan shook his head. "They started to come through the air," he answered cautiously.

"Everybody knows that the fairies always pass to and fro through Piper's Hole," said Annet, in a positive voice. "The mermaids, too. The cave there goes right through Inniscaw and under the sea, and comes up again in the mainland. Nobody living has ever gone that way; but Farmer Santo had an uncle once that owned a sheep-dog that wandered into Piper's Hole and was lost, and a month later it turned up on the mainland with all its hair off."

"It do go in a terrible long way, to be sure," Jan admitted; "for I made a trial of it myself, one time, at low water. First of all you come to a pool, and, then, about fifty yards further, to another pool, and into that I went plump, coming upon it sudden, in the darkness. I swallowed a bellyful of it, too, and the water—if you'll believe me—was quite fresh. I didn't try no further, because, in the first place, the tide was rising, and because, when I pulled myself out, I heard a sound on t'other side of the pool like as if some creature was breathin' hard there in the darkness. It properly raised my hair, and I turned tail."

"Fie, Jan! Ran away from a mermaid!" said Vashti, laughing. "You should have brought her home and married her."

"I don't want to marry no woman with a tail like a fish, nor no woman that makes thikky noise with her breathin'," maintained Jan. "That's to say, if merrymaid it were, which I doubts. But you're wrong about my father, Miss Vazzy. He see'd a merrymaid sure 'nough; but he never took her home. No, he was too much of a gentleman, besides bein' afeard o' my mother. If you want the story, he was down in Piper's Hole one day warping ashore some few kegs of brandy that had been sunk thereabouts by a Rosco trader. Mr. Pope's father, that was agent to th' old Duke, used to employ my father regular on this business, knowing him for a silent man, and one to be trusted; and my father had made a very pretty catchet some way back-along in the cave, big enough to hold two score of kegs, and well above reach of the sea-water. But, o' course, while he was at this kind of work, Mr. Pope had to wink an eye now and then if one o' the kegs leaked a bit. Well, my father had finished his job that day in a sweatin' hurry, the tide bein' nearabouts on the top of the flood, and at the end, all the kegs bein' stowed, he spiled one 'for the good of the house,' as he put it, and drew off a tot in a tin panikin he kept handy. With this and his pipe he settled himself down 'pon a dry ledge and waited for the tide to run back.

"Out beyond the mouth of the hole he could see a patch of blue sky, and the little waves under it glancin' in the sunshine; and belike the dazzle of it, or else the tot of brandy, made him feel drowsy-like. Anyhow, he woke up to see that the tide had run out a bravish lot, leavin' the sands high and dry. But, as you know, there's a pool o' water close inside the entrance, and what should my father see in the pool but a woman's head and shoulders!

"She had raised herself out of the water with her hands restin' on a slab of rock, and over the rock she stared at my father, like as if she wanted help, and again like as if she felt too timid to ask. And when I called her a woman I said wrong; for she was more like a child, and a frightened one, with terrible pretty eyes, and her long hair shed down over her shoulders, drippin' wet, and in colour between gold and sea-green. 'Hullo!' said my father, 'and who might you be, makin' so bold?' At the sound of his speech she gave a little scritch at first, and bobbed down face-under, so that her hair lay afloat and spread itself all over the water like sea-weed. My father walked up closer. 'Nonsense, my dear,' says he, in his coaxin' voice, 'there's nothin' to be afeard of. I'm a respectable married man, and old enough to be your father. So put up your face—come now!—and tell me all about it.' After a bit she lifted her face, very pitiful, and says she in a small voice, 'I was afeard you had been drinkin', sir.' 'A little—a very little,' answers my father; 'we'll say no more about it.' 'And I was afeard,' says she, 'you would want to carry me home and marry me against my will!' 'Lord,' says my father, 'trust a woman for putting notions into a man's head. No, no, my dear; I can get all the temperance talk I want without committin' bigamy for it.' 'An' you couldn' marry me,' says the merrymaid, with a kind o' sob, 'because I'm married already, an' the mother of two as pretty children as ever you wished to see. I can hear 'em callin' for me,' she said, 'down there, beyond the bar,' and she went on to tell him (but the tale was all mixed up with sobbin') how she and the children had been swimmin' along shore that afternoon, and liftin' their heads above water to glimpse the sea-pinks and catch a smell of the thyme on the cliffs; and how she had left 'em to play while she swam into the cave to sit for a while and comb out her pretty hair. But the tide had run back while she was busy, and she couldn't crawl back to the sea over the bar, because on dry sand all her strength left her. 'And if I wait for the flood,' she said, 'my husband'll half murder me; for he's jealous as fire.'

"My father listened, and, sure enough, he seemed to hear the children's voices callin' to her out beyond the water's edge. With that, bein' always a tender-hearted man, he knelt down and lifted her out o' the pool. Now, if he'd had more sense at the time he'd have struck a bargain with her; for the merrymaids, they say, can tell where gold is hidden, and charm a man against sickness, and make all his wishes come true. But in the tenderness of his heart he thought 'pon none o' these things. He just let her put her arms round his neck, and lifted her over the sands, and waded out with her, till he stood three feet deep in water in his sea-boots; and then she gave him a kiss and slid away with a flip of her tail. 'Twas only when he stood staring that it crossed his mind what a fool he had been and what a chance he had missed. Then he remembered that she had dropped her comb by the edge of the pool—he had heard it fall when he lifted her, and back he went to search for it: for the sayin' is that with a merrymaid's comb you can comb out your hair in handfuls of guineas. But all he found was a broken bit of shark's jaw, and though he combed for half-an-hour and wished for all kind o' good luck, not a farthin' could he fetch out."

"Is that all?" asked Matthew Henry, as Jan arose from the cart-shaft, dusting the crumbs of bread from his breeches.

"It's enough, I should think," said Linnet, the sceptical, "seeing that it's nothing but a story from beginning to end."

Vashti looked from one child to the other with a twinkle of fun. "We will pay Piper's Hole a visit one of these days," she promised, "and perhaps Linnet will see a real mermaid and be convinced."

"I don't care for mermaids," announced Matthew Henry. "It's the cave I want to explore, to see if it really does lead through to the mainland. And I won't be afraid, like Jan here, and run away from a little noise."

"You wait till you get there before you boast," advised Linnet.

But Vashti's eyes, resting on the boy, grew tender of a sudden. "The way through to the mainland?" she said, musingly. "Matthew Henry is right. It all depends on the heart that tries it; but there is nothing can do him harm if he keeps up his courage; and the end of the road is worth all the journey, for a man."

"Why, Aunt Vazzy, you talk as if you had been there!" cried Annet.

"And so I have, my dear; there and back again."

The three children stared at her. "Aunt Vazzy is joking," said Linnet, severely. Annet was not too sure, and her brow puckered with a frown as she searched for the meaning beneath her aunt's words. But Matthew Henry believed them literally.

"Then," he exclaimed joyfully, "it's all nonsense about Farmer Santo's uncle's sheep-dog. For Aunt Vazzy has beautiful hair!"



CHAPTER XXIII

THE LORD PROPRIETOR HEARS A SIREN SING

Sir,—In answer to your letter of the 19th ultimo, I am directed by the Secretary of State for War to say that a Commission, the composition of which is not finally determined, will shortly be visiting the Islands, with a view to reporting on the adaptability of their existing military works for Coast Defence. Notice of the probable date of this visit shall be sent to you, and the Commissioners will doubtless be glad to avail themselves of any information you may be good enough to put at their disposal. At the same time, there will be given an opportunity of inquiring into the allegations contained in your letter. The Commission will be presided over by Maj.-General Sir Ommaney Ward, K.C.B., R.E., H.M. Director of Fortifications.—I am, sir,

Your obedient servant,

J. FLEETWOOD CUNNINGHAM.

Thrice a week—on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays—the steamer arrived at St. Lide's Quay, bringing the mainland mail, and the Lord Proprietor's post-bag usually reached him soon after luncheon. It carried, as a rule, a bulky correspondence, and since the steamer weighed anchor early next morning, the Lord Proprietor set aside the early part of these three afternoons to letter-writing.

The passage had been smooth to-day, and the bag had been delivered to him and opened as he took his solitary meal. Also the mail for the great house was a light one, and out of it the Lord Proprietor, catching sight of the official stamp on the envelope, had at once selected the letter quoted above. He perused it, and re-perused it, to the neglect of the rest of his correspondence, tilting it against a bowl of Michaelmas daisies in front of his plate.

It was satisfactory, he decided—that is to say, on the whole, and so far as it went. He foresaw that short shrift would be given to those idlers on Garrison Hill. On the other hand, he frowned at the prospect—call it the chance, rather—of seeing that establishment replaced by one more efficient. To be sure, if the necessities of Coast Defence demanded it.... Still, for his part, he would have preferred to be let alone. The Islands, with their many outlying reefs and poor anchorage could never afford room to such battleships as were built in these days; and to erect new fortifications to cover a roadstead that would seldom if ever be used appeared the plainest waste of public money.... He really thought that the War Office might have consulted him before coolly proposing to plant a new garrison above St. Lide's. He was not even sure they had a right, without his consent.... He would confer with Mr. Pope on this point. At the very least, it would have been courteous to start by asking his opinion; for, after all, he owned the Islands. He was responsible, too, for the general good conduct of the population; good conduct which the advent of a body of soldiery would certainly affect—nay, might entirely upset.

Nevertheless, he reflected that—however the Commissioners might decide (and he would take care to press his opinion energetically)—his letter to the Secretary of State for War had at least done no harm. The Commissioner's visit had obviously been projected before the receipt of it, and at the worst it would enable him to call quits with Vigoureux.

He reflected further that these roving Commissions to report were often no index of Government policy, but were simply appointed to shelve, while professing to consider a question which the Government found awkward.

So, luncheon over, he sat down and wrote a letter thanking the Secretary for his communication, and very politely offering to do all in his power to make the Commissioners' visit "to these out-of-the-world Islands" a pleasant one.

Having copied the letter and read it over with no little approval, the Lord Proprietor dealt briefly with the rest of his correspondence; consulted his pocket-diary, looked at his watch, and, finding that he had an hour to spare before granting an interview to Eli Tregarthen, stepped out upon the terrace, where Abe Jenkins was cutting back the geraniums that had well-nigh ceased to flower.

"But is it necessary?" asked the Lord Proprietor. "Here, in the very mouth of the Gulf Stream ... and last winter we escaped with nothing worse than two degrees of frost."

"Last winter and this winter be two different things, sir," protested Abe, gently but firmly. "Last winter, sir—as you may have taken notice—we had next to no berries 'pon the holly; and no seals, nor yet no mermaids."

"Seals? Mermaids?" Sir Caesar echoed.

"Which I've always heard it said, sir," Old Abe went on, with the air of one carefully, even elaborately, deferring to superior ignorance, "as how than seals you can have no surer sign of hard weather. Of mermaids I says nothing, except that with such-like creatures about you may count 'pon something out of the common."

"Since," said the Lord Proprietor, "there are no such things as mermaids, we will confine ourselves to seals.... I had no idea that seals—er—frequented our shores."

"No more they don't, unless summat extr'ord'ny has taken the weather. But I've heard tell of a season when, for weeks together, you could count up two or three score together baskin' on the beaches to the north of the Island here. Sam Leggo can tell you all about it"—Abe jerked a thumb in the direction of North Inniscaw Farm. "He and his father used to hunt them, one time, along with Phil Cara of St. Hugh's. You know where the old adit goes into the cliff under Carn Coppa? Well, they tell me that if you follow the adit for fifty yards you come to a kind of pit that breaks straight down and through the roof of a cave—Ogo Vean, they call it—to the west of Piper's Hole, and this cave fairly swarmed with seals. The three men would lower themselves by rope-ladders—I reckon old Leggo had learnt the trick of it in by-gone days when the Free-traders used the adit—and get down upon a strip of firm shingle at the inner end of the cave; and there Sam Leggo would hold the lantern while his father and Phil Cara blazed away. They never shot more than a brace at a time, because of the difficulty of getting the bodies up the ladder, for they had to be gone before high-water, and likewise there was always a danger that the seals might charge 'em in a herd, bein' angered by the loss of their mates. In this way they pretty well cleared out the cave—all but one great beauty that old Leggo had sworn to take alive. For, instead of bein' yellow or motley-brown like the rest, this fellow was white as milk all over, besides bein' powerful as any other two. He seemed to know from the first that the three men didn't mean to shoot him. The lanterns and the firing never hurried him a bit, and he never threw himself into a rage over the loss of his relations. He just kept out of reach, looking like as if he despised the whole business, and refused to quit. He was cautious, too; wouldn't trust the cave in weather when a boat could follow him and block up the entrance. On fine nights he had a favourite rock just outside Ogo Vean—you can see it from the top of the cliff—and there he'd lie asleep and dare 'em; out of reach, but plain enough to see, even in the dark, because of his white skin.

"Now, as you may have taken notice, sir, the tide runs out dry to this rock on the inshore side; but seaward it goes down, even at low springs, into more'n three fathoms of water, and my gentleman always took his forty winks on the seaward slope. Half-a-dozen times did Phil Cara, thinkin' to catch him——"

"I beg your pardon," interrupted Sir Caesar, "'Cara,' did you say?"

"Yes, sir; Philip Cara, father to Eli Tregarthen's wife over to Saaron; and likewise, o' course, to Eli Tregarthen's wife's sister, that is lodging at Saaron Farm, having come home from service a while back."

"Eh? From service?" the Lord Proprietor echoed, with quickened interest. "What sort of service?"

"Why, as to that, sir, I can't say that I can tell you for certain; but it's somewheres on the mainland, and the young woman seems a very respectable young woman. But whether she means to bide wi' the family or has come to lodge while lookin' out for another place, I can't certainly say—the Tregarthens bein' a close-tongued lot, as you know."

"A lady's-maid?" hazarded the Lord Proprietor.

"May be. Well, as I was tellin' you, half-a-dozen times did Phil Cara, bidin' his time till the tide was low and the sand hard——"

"But it's impossible," said the Lord Proprietor, pursuing his own train of thought.

Abe regarded his master rather in sorrow than in anger. "To be sure, sir," said he, in a tone of delicate rebuke, "if you don't want to hear my story——"

"Eh? Yes, certainly, my wits were wool-gathering, Abe, and I beg your pardon. Let me see.... You were saying that Cara used to wait till the tide was low——"

"Yes, sir. He'd creep along the sand, he and the two Leggos, and th' old seal would lie there sleepin', innocent as a child, and let them come close under the rock, and even climb it. But soon as ever they made a pounce—c'lk!—he rolled off the slope and into deep water. Regular as clockwork it happened; quiet and easy as a door on a greased hinge; and every time it made the three look foolisher and foolisher.

"After half-a-dozen tries, Cara allowed that he couldn' go on bein' mocked by a dumb animal; so he set his brain to work, and thought out a new plan. The two Leggos were to take a boat and drop down wi' the tide close in the shadow of the rock 'pon the seaward side, while Cara himself crept, as usual, hands-an'-knees, across the beach. So they planned, an' so they did; and sure enough when Cara made a pounce for the seal, my gentleman rolled down the ledge and slap into the boat! 'Now you've got 'en!' yells Cara. 'Darn it all!' yells back old Leggo from the scuffle, 'Seems more like he's got WE!' For that seal, sir, fought like ten tom-cats; and before the Leggos got in a lucky stroke and knocked him silly with a stretcher he'd ripped one leg off th' old man's trousers and bitten the heel clean off Sam's right boot. They took him home and skinned him, and sold the skin that same year to a Dutch skipper for thirty shillin'. But Sam has told me more than twice that he don't mean to tempt Providence again by catchin' any more seals."

The Lord Proprietor looked at his watch. "I must get Leggo to show me that adit this very afternoon. I've an appointment at three-thirty to meet him and Tregarthen at the farm."

"Indeed, sir? Then you've brought Eli Tregarthen to his senses?—if I may make so bold."

The Lord Proprietor flushed, remembering that Abe had witnessed the interview in the walled garden. "I fancy the man has begun to see the red light," he answered, carelessly. "At any rate, he has consented to meet me and take a look over North Inniscaw."

"Well," said Abe, "you'll find him a good farmer; none better."

"And he'll find me a landlord, willing to let bygones be bygones. By the way," added Sir Caesar, yet more carelessly, "I am curious to know if I met that sister-in-law of his the other day?—a decidedly handsome woman, and strikingly well dressed. In fact, I should say she bought her clothes in Paris."

Abe stared, as though his master had suddenly taken leave of his senses.

"I never been to Paris," he said, slowly. "When I seen her last she was nettin' sand-eels, with her legs bare to the knee."

* * * * *

Sir Caesar walked indoors to fetch his hat and his gun. Though he rarely used it, he invariably carried a gun under his arm in his walks about the Islands. It helped his sense of being monarch of all he surveyed.

That sense was strong in him as he took the path which led across the middle of the Island to North Inniscaw Farm. St. Lide's lay directly behind him, to the south, and thus no Garrison Hill obtruded upon his view to remind him of annoyances. The sea shone, the air was pure, the whole seascape flashed white upon blue—white gulls wheeling aloft, white breasts of puffins congregated on the smaller islets, white caps of tiny waves where the breeze met the tide-race, on North Island the white shaft of a lighthouse fronting the almost level sun. With a touch of imagination the scene had become a prospect of the Cyclades, the lighthouse a column to Aphrodite or the twin brothers of Helen. But the Lord Proprietor was a Briton. He halted on the hill-side to inhale the vigorous breeze, and his heart rejoiced that all he saw belonged to him.

The path descended a stony hillside, crossed a marshy green hollow, and mounted a second stony hill. Over the summit of it the low roofs of a line of farm-buildings hove into sight. This was North Inniscaw; and the Lord Proprietor, arriving punctually at three-thirty, found Eli Tregarthen at the gate in converse with Sam Leggo, the hind in temporary charge of the farm.

If Eli had begun to see reason, his face held out no promise of it. It was dark and gloomy; a trifle weary, too, as though he kept this appointment rather through politeness than with any care for its outcome. He saluted the Lord Proprietor respectfully, but at once bent his eyes to the ground.

"Good afternoon! Good afternoon, Tregarthen!" Sir Caesar began, in his heartiest voice, to show that he bore no malice. "I like punctuality, and those who practise it. Punctuality, if I may say so, is not a wide-spread virtue in these Islands. Shall we go round and take stock?"

"If it will give you satisfaction, sir," assented Eli.

Sir Caesar led the way, pausing at every gate to discuss the soil, the crop, the present price of oats, barley, roots of beef and mutton; drainage and top-dressing; aspect and shelter; a hundred odds and ends. He talked uncommonly good sense, too, as Eli confessed to himself. The Lord Proprietor had taken up with agriculture late in life, but he brought to it a trained and thoroughly practical mind. Once or twice he submitted a point to Sam Leggo, who had worked all his life on this very farm, and Eli was forced to admire the pertinence of his questions and cross-questions.

He talked with great good humour, too, although Eli gave it small encouragement. The shadow of leaving Saaron had hung over Eli's mind for more than two months; heavy, oppressive, but until this morning intangible as a cloud. Vashti had remarked that the days deadened him while they should have been nerving him to action; and Vashti, this very morning, had forced his eyes open by asking, in a business-like way, if he had ever thought of emigrating to the mainland. Were it not wiser, since the wrench must come, to make it complete?—to go where regret would not be kept aching by the daily sight of Saaron? The children would find better schools on the mainland, and it was high time to be thinking of Matthew Henry, who deserved a better education than the Islands could afford.

In arguing thus, Vashti was not entirely serious. She knew that Eli would never cut himself loose from the Islands; but she hoped, by forcing him to face the alternative, to shake him out of his torpor. In this she had partly succeeded. For the first time the man opened his eyes and saw hard facts—facts that in a few weeks' time he must grapple with, since neither grieving nor grumbling would remove them. But for the moment the discovery, instead of nerving him, inflamed his wrath.

A strong man, finding himself helpless, suffers horribly. Especially he suffers when, with a dim sense that in the last resort all power depends on strength, he finds himself tripped up and laid on his back by a man physically his inferior. Had the Lord Proprietor inherited the Islands from a line of ancestors—had his tyranny rested on any feudal tradition—Eli was Briton enough to have acquiesced or submitted. But this whipper-snapper had bought the Islands: money—dirty money alone—gave him power over men who were Islanders by birth and by long generations of breeding. While the Lord Proprietor talked, Eli felt an impulse almost uncontrollable to lay hands on him and wring his neck.

The three men had reached Coppa Parc, an enclosure of twelve acres bounded along the north by the cliffs' edge, and deriving its name from a mass of granite rock—Carn Coppa—that, rising in ledges from near the middle of the field, ran northward until it broke away precipitously, overhanging the sea. The slopes around the base of the Carn showed here and there an outcrop of granite, but with pockets of deep soil in which (or so the Lord Proprietor maintained) barley could be grown at a profit. He appealed to Eli.

"Come, what does Mr. Tregarthen say to it? A piece of ground like this—hey?—oughtn't to beat a man that has grown barley on Saaron?"

He said it intending no offence, but in a bluff, hearty way, which he meant to be genial. After a second or two, Eli not answering, he turned and saw to his amazement that the man was trembling from head to foot with wrath.

"What right have you? What right——" Eli stammered fiercely, and came to a full stop, clenching his fists.

The Lord Proprietor stared at him. "My good fellow, I hadn't the smallest wish to hurt your feelings. What ails you? An innocent remark, surely!"

"What ails me?" echoed Eli, and stopped again, panting. "Man, have done with this, and let me go—else I'll not promise to keep my hands off you!"

For a moment he stood threatening, his eyes—like the eyes of a dumb animal at bay—travelling from the Lord Proprietor to Sam Leggo. The blood ebbed from his face, and left it unnaturally white. But of a sudden he appeared to collect himself; thrust both hands in his pockets, and, turning his back, walked away resolutely down the slope.

"Well!" said Sam Leggo, after a pause. "Well!"

"The man has never been thwarted before," said the Lord Proprietor, as they gazed after him together. "That's what comes of living alone in a place like Saaron; and I'll take care his children don't learn the same folly. Feels the curb, as you might say. Have you ever seen a horse broken late in life?"

"You take it very quiet, sir, I must say," protested Sam, admiringly. "So disrespectful as he was, too—and to the likes of you! Well! I've known Eli Tregarthen forty year, and if any man had come and told me——"

"The worst is, we have wasted an afternoon," said Sir Caesar, easily. "But since we are here, with half-an-hour to spare before sunset, what do you say to showing me the adit?"

"The adit, sir?"

"There's an old adit hereabouts—eh?—that leads down to a cave.... Come, come, my good man, you don't deceive me by putting on that stupid face! We don't allow smuggling on the Islands in these days, and I like to know the secrets of my own property. The cave is called Ogo Vean, or something like it; and if I must explain more precisely, it is where you and your father used to go hunting seals."

"Yes, yes, to be sure," Sam admitted; "an adit there is, or used to be. But," he went on more cheerfully, "you'll find it nothing to look at. I han't set foot inside it for years, and I doubt but the entrance is choked."

"Take me to it," said Sir Caesar.

Sam, without further remonstrance, led the way. They scrambled out to the edge of the Carn, and there, where the last great boulder thrust itself forward over the sea, Sam scrambled off to the left, and lowered himself down upon a turfy ledge. Warning his master to leave his gun behind and beware of the slippery grass, he sidled out alongside the jutting slab, and suddenly ducked under it. The Lord Proprietor, following, crawled under the stone, and found himself staring into the mouth of the adit—a dark hole less than four feet in height, and overgrown with ivy. Sam had spoken the truth. The passage, whithersoever it led, had been disused for years.

"Cur'ous old place!" said Sam, reflectively, plucking at the ivy. "I've a mind to try the inside of it again, one of these days."

"I've a mind to explore it now," said the Lord Proprietor.

Sam stared at him. "You couldn't, sir; not without a lantern. You'd be breakin' your neck, to a certainty."

"Then fetch a lantern. Look sharp, man! Run back to the farm and fetch a lantern. I'll wait for you—no, not here: a few minutes on this ledge would turn my head giddy—but on the Carn above."

Without further words, he worked his body around carefully, and led the way back to the summit.

"You'd best hurry," he advised Sam, who showed no eagerness for the job. "In another twenty minutes the dusk will be closing down fast."

Sam slouched off at a fair pace across the field. Sir Caesar watched his retreating figure until it reached the gate, and then, picking up his gun, disposed himself to wait.

Seals? They ought to give good sport—better sport, he should imagine, than deerstalking. A pity, too, to let it die out ... if seals still frequented the Islands.... He must consult Sam about it, and pick up a few wrinkles. He peered over the edge of the Carn, scanning the water, a hundred feet below him, for the rock which Abe had described. He could see no such rock. Maybe, though, it would be covered by the tide, now close upon high-water.

Then he bethought him that the rock must lie a little to the west, towards Piper's Hole—that is to say, in the next small indentation of the shore. He strolled in that direction, following the cliff's edge, still with eyes upon the sea.

Of a sudden he stopped and straightened himself up with a gasp.

What sound was that?... Surely a voice—a woman's voice—singing up to him from the depth!

Was he awake or dreaming?... Beyond all doubt someone was singing, down there: a mournful, wordless song. He was no judge of music, but it seemed to him that, let alone the mystery of the singer, he had never heard a voice so wonderful. It rose and fell with the surge of the tide.

The Lord Proprietor laid down his gun. He had come to a shelving slope that descended like a funnel or the half of a broken crater, narrowing to a dark pit, in which the sea heaved gently, but with a sound as of a monster sobbing; but still above this sound rose the voice of the singer.

He flung himself on the verge beside his gun and craned forward.... Yes, there was the rock; yes, and there on the rock sat a figure—a woman—and combed her long hair while she sang.



CHAPTER XXIV

LINNET SEES A MERMAID

Annet, Linnet, and Matthew Henry sat together in a niche of the cliff to the west of Piper's Hole, and panted after their climb.

They had raced up the hill in the gathering twilight for this (their Aunt Vazzy had assured them) was the time, if ever, to hear the mermaids singing in Piper's Hole, and perhaps to catch a glimpse of them; this, and the hour of moonrise—which for them would be out of the question.

For some days they had been discussing the adventure—not, it scarcely needs to be said, in their parents' hearing. But they had once or twice consulted with Aunt Vazzy, who understood children, and had a sense (denied to most grown-ups) of what was really interesting; and to-day, at dinner-time, Aunt Vazzy had allowed that no time could well be more propitious than this evening, when the hours of twilight and of low water almost exactly coincided. But in private she warned Annet very earnestly to look well after the two younger ones, and see to it that they did not risk their necks—a caution seldom given to Island children, who grow up sure-footed as young goats.

Annet had promised. The main difficulty would be to give the slip to Jan, who usually pulled across from Saaron in good time to fetch them home, and smoked a pipe by the shore while waiting for school to be dismissed. It would take them a good forty minutes to reach Piper's Hole and return. If they gave Jan the slip and delayed him so long, he would undoubtedly lose his temper, and probably report them. After discussing this, they decided to take Jan into the plot. "Maybe," said Annet, "he'll come along, too. I almost think he will if we put it to him all of a sudden, for he's mighty curious about mermaids; but if we give him time to think it over he'll feel ashamed, and say it's all children's whiddles, and back out—I know Jan. So we must wait till school is over and then coax him to come."

Annet did not know that her father, having an appointment with the Lord Proprietor at North Inniscaw Farm, designed himself to call at the school on his way back, and row the children home. Had she guessed this it would have prevented the adventure, which, in fact, it furthered; for, coming out of school and hurrying down to the shore to catch Jan and wheedle him, she found the boat moored there empty. Jan, no doubt, had taken a stroll up to the Lord Proprietor's garden, to have a chat with Old Abe. They had caught him napping; and now, if they kept him waiting, he could not grumble.

So off the three children set for Piper's Hole; Annet and Linnet with long strides, Matthew Henry trotting to keep up with them. Arrived at the cliff's edge, they deployed with great caution—that no noise might scare the mermaids from coming forth—and searched for a nook where, themselves hidden, they could command a view of the cove at their feet.

Linnet, searching to the westward, found just such a spot; a rocky ledge, well grassed, close under the topmost cornice of the cliff, and quite easy of access. To be sure, a rock on their right cut off their view of the cove's inmost recess, where the funnel-shaped slope broke sheer over the mouth of the Hole. But the ledge looked full upon the Mermaid's Rock and the heave of black water surging past it to gurgitate between the narrowing walls of rock.

Even the matter-of-fact Linnet could not repress a shiver as, after panting a while, she raised herself on one elbow and looked down into the awesome pit. For not only was the water black, but the whole shadowed base of the cliff wall; black as though stained by the inky wave. Black, too, showed the hither side of the Mermaid's Rock against a gray sea, from which the last tint of sunset had faded. Now and then, between the sobbing of Piper's Hole, the children caught the murmur of the tide race, half-a-mile off shore, slackening its note as it neared the time of high-water and its turning point. Out there the sea was agitated; within the line of the race, sharply defined on the gray, it heaved and sank on an oily swell.

"My!" said Matthew Henry, gazing; and Annet turned on her sister and said, "There, now!" The words may seem inadequate, but Linnet understood them, and that they conveyed a question which she felt to be a poser. How could she doubt the existence of mermaids in such a spot as this? If a mermaid were to swim up to the surface under their very eyes, would she be more wonderful than the actual scene—the black rocks, the sobbing water?

"Folks," said Annet, incisively, "that laugh at stories about Piper's Hole, ought to come and see the place for themselves."

"Yes," Matthew Henry agreed; "and after that they can begin to talk."

"I didn't laugh," protested Linnet, flung upon her defence. "Besides," she went on weakly, "I don't see why it must be mermaids. If anything lives down there, why shouldn't it be a dragon—-or a giant, perhaps——"

"Linnet's improving," put in Matthew Henry, with fine sarcasm.

"Well, it sounds to me more like the noise a dragon would make," Linnet persisted, finding as she went on that her argument was carrying her through very creditably; "or a giant snoring, as they always do after meals."

Annet scanned the black water pensively. "I've heard tell," she said, "of great cuttles that sit and squat under the water; and sometimes, when they are hungry, they fling up their suckers and pull you down off the rocks and eat you."

Matthew Henry drew back from the brink, visibly daunted.

"Look here," he began, "I don't mind mermaids. Mermaids, so far as they go——"

But here he came to a halt as a tinkling sound—the sound of a stringed instrument, gently thrummed, rose from out of the abyss.

It fell on their ears in a pause of the surging water. It came from the Mermaid's Rock, and thither all three children turned their eyes, to see, over the crest of it, from its hidden seaward side, a woman's head and shoulders emerge into view!

In the gathering dusk, even had she lifted her face to them, they could not have discerned her features. But as she climbed into view her loosened hair fell all about her; on the summit of the rock she turned and seated herself fronting the sea; and while the three children drew together, cowering, at her gaze, she began to sing.

And she sang marvellously. If her song had words, they were foreign words; but whether articulate or not it was beautiful beyond all human compass—or so at least it seemed to the children, whose experience rested, to be sure, on the congregational efforts of Brefar Church.

It rose and sank upon the swell of the tide. It held such sweetness in its mystery that, frightened though they were, the wonder of it drew tears to their eyes. It seemed to open pathways into that world of their desire, on the boundaries of which they were forever treading; yet forever vainly, because they had not the passwords, and in their ignorance could only guess that miracles lay beyond, sealed, unimaginable.

The children huddled together, lost their fear in wonder, as the voice of the mermaid, growing more and more confident, pierced new roads for them—roads upon which the twilight closed at once; rays into a glory they felt, and trembled to feel, but could not apprehend, because the vision was of mere beauty, and music divorced from words is the last of arts to convey form and meaning.

Yet though wholly indefinite, almost wholly meaningless, it spoke to something to which the children felt all their blood thrilling, responding. Listening, they forgot their fear altogether....

The singer laid down her instrument. The grey of the twilight ran over her bare shoulders as, with a turn of the arm, she swept her tresses back, and—still singing—drew out mirror and comb....

They craned to watch.

Suddenly from the height of the cliff, close on their right, rang out the report of a gun. The song ceased abruptly, lost in the echoes that beat from cliff to cliff, and amid these echoes the children heard a noise of falling stones, followed by a heavy splash.

Annet had sprung to her feet. Linnet and Matthew Henry, too, had picked themselves up, though more slowly.... A wisp of smoke drifted by the rock to their right. When they turned their eyes upon the Mermaid's Rock the singer had vanished.

Annet caught Matthew Henry by one hand; Matthew Henry stretched out another to Linnet. The three scrambled up to the cliff-top, and thence raced homeward, panic-stricken, across the darkening fields.



CHAPTER XXV

MISSING!

"Sir,—I am directed by the Secretary of State for War to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 19th ultimo, the contents of which shall receive his attention.

"I am, sir,

"Your obedient servant,

"J. FLEETWOOD CUNNINGHAM."

The Commandant, from long disuse, had forgotten the formalities of official correspondence. His hand shook as he tore open the long envelope, expecting to read his fate, and in the revulsion, as his eyes fell on the few lines of acknowledgment, he caught at the table's edge and sank into his chair with a sudden feeling of faintness.

For a few hours, then—possibly for a few days—he was respited. He put the letter aside and walked out, to take his afternoon stroll around the fortifications and steady his nerves.

By the Keg of Butter Battery he halted for a long look across the Sound and towards Saaron. Unconsciously for a week past, he had fallen into a habit of halting just here and letting his eyes travel towards Saaron. It was just here that Vashti had seated herself the first morning, and had asked him the fatal question, "For what, then, do they pay you?" He remembered the words, the inflection of scorn in her tone. Here at his feet on a cushion of wild thyme lay the stone she had prised out absently, while she spoke, with the point of her sunshade. Just here, too, she had taken leave of him on the night of her escapade, the night when (it was bliss to remember) she had recanted her scorn, had asked his forgiveness.

For a whole week he had not seen her. Was she careless, then, of the answer?—of what resulted from the train she had fired?... But, after all (the Commandant told himself), she had no need to concern herself about it. She had but set him in the way of doing his duty; for the rest, a man must accept his own responsibility, stand by his own actions, abide his own fate.

Yet he would have given a great deal, just now, for speech with her, to tell her that, unimportant though it was, some word from the War Office had reached him.

Throughout his stroll his mind kept harking back to this letter, seeking behind the few and formal words for meanings they did not cover; and again that evening, after his frugal supper, he drew the envelope from its pigeon-hole, spread the paper on the table before him, and sat studying it.

He lifted his head, at a sound in the passage. The outer door had been burst open violently, as though by a gust of wind, and a moment later Archelaus came running in with a face of panic.

"The Lord behear us!" gasped Archelaus. "Oh, sir, here's awful, awful news! The Lord Proprietor's been murdered, and his body flung over the cliff, and Sam Leggo and Abe the gardener be running through the streets wi' the news of it!"

"Murdered! The Lord Proprietor!" echoed the Commandant, laying down his glasses and rising to his feet in blankest amaze.

"Yes, sir; shot with his own gun, and, they say, by Eli Tregarthen! The two men have pulled across from Inniscaw for help, and to fetch the constable.... I had the news from Sam Leggo hisself, as he raced off to knock up Mr. Pope."

The Commandant sank back in his chair. Dreadful though the news was, he saw in a flash that it was not incredible. Eli Tregarthen owed the Lord Proprietor a grudge, and a bitter one. Eli Tregarthen was a man capable of brooding over his wrongs and exacting wild justice for them. The Commandant's thoughts flew to Vashti.

But even as he passed a hand over his eyes, another footstep invaded the outer passage, and Mr. Pope himself rushed in, mopping his brow.

"My dear friend—" Not in his life before had Mr. Pope addressed the Commandant as "my dear friend." He glanced from one scared face to the other. "You have heard? Oh, but it is terrible!... And what on earth are we to do?"

"I beg your pardon," answered the Commandant, recovering his presence of mind. "'We,' did you say?"

"Naturally I came first to you.... You being a magistrate, and—if this dreadful news be true—the chief magistrate left on the Islands."

"True," said the Commandant, yet more quietly. He had regained his self-possession. "I had forgotten. To be sure, I had renounced the office—as I supposed—at the Lord Proprietor's own wish; but doubtless it reverts to me, and, in any case, this is no time to discuss proprieties. Will you tell me what has happened and what has already been done?"

"Done? I have done nothing except send for the constable, with word that he was to follow me here to the Barracks and take your orders."

"But where is the body?"

"The body?" Mr. Pope shivered. "God knows. That, my dear Commandant, is the cruellest part of the mystery—at least, according to Sam Leggo. It appears that Sir Caesar, Leggo and Eli Tregarthen were at North Inniscaw this afternoon, taking stock of the farm, which Sir Caesar was persuading Tregarthen to rent. Tregarthen was sullen—you may have heard that he resents being given notice to quit his holding on Saaron. In the end, on some chance word of Sir Caesar's he blazed up, completely lost control of himself, and used threats of personal violence. Leggo will swear to this; but it is immaterial, for I myself have heard him indulge in similar threats, and so has Abe, the gardener. Well, Tregarthen swung off in a huff, took his way down across Pare Coppa—it was there, just under the Cam, that the outbreak occurred—apparently for the landing-quay by the school, where his boat lay. He left Sir Caesar and Sam Leggo standing there."

"At what time?"

"The time, according to Leggo, was close upon sunset. Sir Caesar—as his habit is—carried a gun under his arm; but whether or not the gun was loaded Leggo is unable to say. After expressing surprise at Tregarthen's display of temper, Sir Caesar turned the conversation upon an old adit which lies under the seaward face of the Cam, and leads (I am assured) down to Ogo Vean. Its existence is known to very few—and Leggo was surprised to hear him mention it; but it now appears that he had learnt of it this very afternoon, in casual talk with old Abe. He desired then and there to explore it, and—having examined the entrance—either because the adit itself is dark, or as a precaution in the gathering dusk, he sent Leggo back to the farmhouse to fetch a lantern. Leggo declares that it took him less than fifteen minutes to reach the farm, find the lantern, and return with it to the lower gate of Parc Coppa; also that he used his best speed because the dusk was gathering. As he reached the gate he heard a shot from somewhere on the edge of the cliffs. This did not perturb him, for he supposed that the Lord Proprietor was potting at a stray rabbit. As he climbed the field, however, towards the Carn, on the summit of which he had left Sir Caesar seated, he saw three small children running along the cliffs to his left, making for the slope towards the landing-quay, and recognised them for Tregarthen's three children. He called to them to stop, for they seemed to be running in a panic. If they heard, they did not obey, but ran down the hill out of sight. By this—and because he could not see Sir Caesar on the summit of the Carn—he began to grow alarmed, lit the candle within his lantern (for it was now nearly dark), and shouted. He received no answer. He ran to the edge of the Carn, climbed down thence to the mouth of the adit, and—finding no trace of his master—began to hunt, still shouting, along the cliffs to the left, in the direction where he had first spied the children. To cut his story short," resumed Mr. Pope, after taking breath, "his search led him to the edge of the cliffs over Piper's Hole, and there, in a tangle of brambles, his lantern shone on something bright, which proved, when at no small risk he climbed down to it, to be the barrel of Sir Caesar's gun. Below the brambles (he says) the ground breaks away very precipitately to a sheer fall of rock over the entrance of Piper's Hole. He could not trust himself here, but declares that the earth below the brambles—so much his lantern showed him—had evidently been disturbed, and quite recently; as also that the slide was bare and smooth, with no trace of a body between it and the last ledge over which a falling body would plunge into the water; and the tide, as he says—and as, indeed, we know—was almost at full flood. Having satisfied himself of this, he ran back, down the hill and past the school to carry the alarm to the house; and from the quay beside the school he saw Tregarthen's boat crossing to Saaron, and Tregarthen in it with his three children. Sam called to him, and his call brought out the schoolmistress, who no sooner heard the story than she fell to screaming. Tregarthen, though he must have heard the noise they made, did not respond, but continued pulling calmly towards Saaron.

"Leggo could not say precisely, but admits that the boat was already nearing Saaron, and that the man, if he heard, possibly did not understand—that is, if one can suppose him innocent."

"We will suppose him innocent," said the Commandant, "until we have better evidence that he is guilty. What was Leggo's next step?"

"He ran on smoking-hot to the house, the schoolmistress after him; up through the gardens to the terrace, where they met old Abe returning home from work. The schoolmistress went on to alarm the servants, while the two men made for the private landing, unmoored the Lord Proprietor's boat, and pulled across for Garland Town to break the news to me. But on the quay and along the streets they told it to a score of people, and it is spreading through the town like wildfire."

"Naturally." The Commandant had fetched and slipped on his great-coat, and stood buttoning it. He glanced at his watch. "If the constable does not turn up in a minute or so, we must start without him. Archelaus, run you down and call up Mr. Rogers. Ask him, with my compliments, to call out the coastguard——"

"Pardon me," Mr. Pope interrupted, "but that is unnecessary. Mr. Rogers has already started for Inniscaw in the jolly-boat, taking Leggo with him. They are to search the shore around Piper's Hole."

"Thank you," said the Commandant. "That was obviously the first step to take, and I am obliged to you for having thought of it so promptly."

Mr. Pope coughed apologetically. He had grown of a sudden very red in the face. "In point of fact," he confessed, "Mr. Rogers was at my house when the news came. We were—er—indulging in a quiet rubber."

The Commandant understood. Had the occasion been less serious, he might have smiled. Not since the night which brought Vashti to the Islands had he received an invitation to Mrs. Pope's parties.

"Ah, to be sure!" said he, quietly, reaching for his forage-cap; "I had forgotten that this was your whist-evening."

Mr. Pope coughed again awkwardly, and was about to make matters worse by further apology, but a rat-tat on the door prevented this, and Archelaus, hurrying out, admitted Dr. Bonaday, the physician of Garland Town, followed by John Ward, the constable, and old Abe.

Of these three old men you would have found it difficult at first sight to decide which was the eldest: and you have not made Dr. Bonaday's acquaintance until now; because it was unnecessary. As the saying went in the Islands, "the old doctor troubled about nobody, and nobody troubled about he"—that is, unless an Islander needed to be helped into the world or out of it. He was a bachelor, a recluse, and (albeit his neighbours were ignorant of this) a European authority on lichens and mosses. A small private income allowed him to indulge a habit of forgetting to charge for his professional services; and, on the strength of it, the Islanders forgave one who never remembered a face, and who, when summoned to a sick-bed, had to be guided thither by a messenger, lest he should knock at half a dozen doors in error by the way. There was a tradition in St. Hugh's that once, running from his surgery with a hot poultice, he had clapped it on the harbour-master, who was politely intercepting him to point out that another two strides would take him over the quay's edge into deep water. In person, Dr. Bonaday was remarkable for a completely bald head, a hooked nose, and a pair of vague, impercipient eyes, as of an owl astray and blinking in the sunlight.

If Dr. Bonaday was an authority on lichens and mosses, Constable Ward was an authority on nothing at all, even in his own house, where his youngest grand-daughter attended to his wants. Amid a population which seldom broke the law and never resisted it, he had sunk of late years into a peaceful decay of all his faculties. He carried his emblem of office, a small mace, attached to his wrist by a string, and his hand shook pitiably as he fumbled for it, but less with excitement than from shock at having been aroused and dragged from his bed into the night air.

"I see no reason for taking the constable with us," the Commandant decided, after a compassionate glance at the old man.

"In case of an arrest—" began Mr. Pope.

"First let us be certain that a crime has been committed."

"To my thinking, all the circumstances point to murder, and to nothing else."

"And, if they do, we can accuse no one until we have found the body.... Constable, you can go back to bed."

"I thank you, sir." Constable Ward, for the instant plainly relieved, checked himself, and stood trembling, irresolute. "You mustn't think, gentlemen, that I'd shirk doing my duty."

"No, no, Ward: I quite understand," the Commandant assured him.

"The Governor," said Mr. Pope, slipping back to the old form of address, disused for years—"The Governor rather doubts that you are equal to it."

"For God's sake, gentlemen, don't put it in that way! This affair'll get into the newspapers, over on the main, and if 'tis said that Constable Ward was too old for his duty, whatever'll become of me?"

Mr. Pope turned away with a sniff of disgust. "People of a certain class," said he half-audibly, "can see nothing but as it affects themselves. Of his duty this old dotard thinks nothing at all, nor of the scandal of his continuing to draw public pay: yet, mark you, how keenly he scents a danger of losing it!"

The Commandant winced, and shot a glance at the aged, unheroic figure. "And there," thought he, "but for God's grace and a woman's word, stands Narcisse Vigoureux! Even so, a few days since, did I consent to be incompetent and dread only to be detected."

Aloud he said: "Mr. Pope is too hasty, Ward, in suggesting that I don't mean to use you. To-morrow, after a night's rest, there may be work enough for you. Come, we are to pass your door, and will see you home. You, Doctor, will accompany us, I hope? We may need you."

They set forth down the dark road towards the quay, Abe and Archelaus walking ahead with lanterns, and guiding. Having restored Constable Ward to his youngest grand-daughter, they pushed forward more briskly, hailing the boat which (according to Mr. Pope) would be standing by for them on Mr. Rogers' instructions. Sure enough, voices answered their hail, and under the shadow of the quay steps they found the six-oared Service gig, with her crew seated ready at their oars: also on the quay itself the whole town gathered, canvassing the dreadful news.

At their approach the confused voices dropped to silence. In silence the town watched its men of authority as they stepped down to the boat and took their seats. And, amid silence, the coxswain called his order, "Give way!"



CHAPTER XXVI

THE SEARCH

Ahead of them, across the Roads, and up the narrow length of Cromwell's Sound, many lights twinkled: for already two-score boats had put out from St. Lide's Quay and were hurrying to the search, with lanterns and hurricane lamps. The windows of the Great House on Inniscaw fairly blazed with light. The upland farmsteads, too, were awake, here and in Brefar, and the cottages around Inniscaw schoolhouse and Brefar Church. Only Saaron, as they passed it, showed no sign of life, no glimmering ray from the windows of Eli Tregarthen's house, dark upon the dark hillside. Mr. Pope called the Commandant's attention to this.

"Patience," said the Commandant. "We will land and question him on our way home."

"You will admit that it looks suspicious."

The Commandant did not answer.

"If Leggo's story be true," said Dr. Bonaday, addressing the coxswain abruptly, as though awakened of a sudden from a brown study, "the accident must have happened just upon high-water; in which case Mr. Rogers will do best to start searching to westward along the north shore of Brefar, following the set of the ebb."

"I reckon he'll take that line, sir, if he finds nothing at Piper's Hole," the coxswain answered. "But his plan, as he told it to me, was to land Leggo, with two of our men, by the schoolhouse, and send them up the hill with ropes and lanterns, while he pulled round and searched Piper's Hole from seaward."

The Doctor appeared to digest this plan for a full minute. "Pope," he said, abruptly as before, "do you happen to know if the Lord Proprietor had made his will?"

"Good Lord!" answered Mr. Pope, testily, "I am not his lawyer."

"He has relatives?"

"Some distant cousins, I believe; none nearer. Why do you ask?"

"Because," answered the Doctor, imperturably, "it occurred to me as a natural question under the circumstances. Then it would appear, my friend, that Sir Caesar's decease (if we suppose it) is a very serious affair indeed for you?"

"Man alive!" snapped Mr. Pope. "Of what else do you suppose I have been thinking, ever since I heard this news?"

Dr. Bonaday did not reply in words; but the Commandant—who happened to be gazing just then towards North Island, where the great sea-light seemed to search the outer tides with its monstrous eye—heard, or fancied that he heard, a sound as of a quiet chuckle. Suddenly he remembered Mr. Pope's scornful criticism of old Constable Ward: remembered it, and glanced at the Doctor. But the Doctor was an uncanny fellow, and inscrutable.

Though the coastguardsmen, pulling with a will, overtook and passed at least a dozen boats on their way, it cost them close upon an hour to reach the upper end of Cromwell's Sound and open the coast along the north side of Inniscaw. They had no need to search for Mr. Rogers and the jolly-boat. Flares were burning and torches waving in and around the entrance to Piper's Hole, and as the gig drew closer the Commandant discerned the figures of half-a-dozen searchers, roped and moving cautiously with lanterns from ledge to ledge of the dizzy cliff. The jolly-boat lay beached on a bank of fine shingle left by the receding tide at the entrance of the cave, and beside it stood Mr. Rogers shouting orders.

He hailed the newcomers as soon as he caught sight of them. Leggo and his two men had found Sir Caesar's gun, and recovered it from the bushes overhanging the cave. But of Sir Caesar himself no trace could be found. It was clear to his mind that the body had rolled down the cliff into deep water, and had been carried out to sea. His fellows up yonder had examined every foot of the descent, and were risking their necks to no purpose. He would give them another ten minutes to make a clean job of the search, and would then call them off and seek along shore to the westward.

Had the cave itself been searched? This was the Commandant's first question as he stepped out upon the shingle.

Yes; they had begun by searching the cave. They had followed it for fifty yards, and come to a ridge of rock, heaped with ore-weed, beyond which (it was certain) no ordinary tide ever penetrated. The floor of the cave shelved pretty steeply up to this ridge, and beyond it lay a pool of fresh water, about twenty yards long. It was impossible that a human body could have been swept over the ridge into this pool. Nevertheless they had explored it. But would the Commandant care to satisfy himself?

Mr. Rogers, without waiting for an answer, picked up a lantern and led the way under the great arch. The Commandant followed, his feet at every step sinking ankle-deep in the fine shingle. He found himself in a passage nine or ten feet wide, the walls of which rose about twenty feet above him, and vaulted themselves in darkness. At first this passage appeared to him to end, some fifteen paces from the entrance, in a barrier of solid rock, but Mr. Rogers, stepping forward with the lantern, revealed a low archway to the left and a second passage, partially choked with ore-weed. Through this they squeezed themselves, crouching and stooping their heads—for the roof in places was less than five feet high—and after a couple of zig-zags drew breath at the entrance of the second chamber, at least as lofty as the first and a full twenty feet wide. Across the entrance the floor sloped up to the rocky ridge, of which Mr. Rogers had spoken; and beyond the ridge lay the pool.

"Taste it," said Mr. Rogers, and the Commandant, kneeling by the edge of the pool, scooped up a palmful of water to his lips. It was fresh water, undoubtedly; very cold, and not in the least brackish.

"Look down," said Mr. Rogers, holding his lantern so that the Commandant could peer into the depths. "You can see every stone at the bottom, and my men have searched it all." He lifted the light above his head and gazed into the mysterious darkness beyond the pool. "I must explore this place to the end, one of these days. The chief boatman waded through, and reported yet another passage beyond; but of course I wouldn't let my men waste time in exploring it. What a place for seals, hey?"

"Seals?" queried the Commandant.

"Leggo gave me a sort of description of the place on our way here. He tells me that this cave and the next are a favourite haunt of the seals when they visit the Islands. In fact, he used to hunt them here with his father. But of late years, for some reason, they have given the Islands the go-by."

"You think it possible," suggested the Commandant, "Sir Caesar may have seen one, and taken a shot at it?"

"That's not likely; and anyway it doesn't help us. It won't account for his gun being found in the bushes, half-way down the cliff, nor for his disappearing. Among a deal that's mysterious, this much is clear: Leggo left him on the cliff above us; within twenty minutes Sir Caesar's gun went off, whether fired by himself or by someone else; and whether wounded or not, he slid down the cliff and over the ledge above the cave. His body is not in the cave; therefore, presumably, it was sucked out to sea by the time, and presumably has been carried somewhere to the westward. Shall we turn back?"

The Commandant nodded. "You will have plenty of folk to help your search," said he, "to judge from the number of boats we passed on our way. By spreading your forces, in less than two hours you can have the whole shore examined, from here to the west of Brefar. By the way, who has possession of Sir Caesar's gun?"

"It was passed up to Sam Leggo, on the cliff. But if you wish to take charge of it——"

"It will probably be wanted for evidence."

"Come, then." Mr. Rogers led the way back to the entrance, and called up an order to have the gun lowered by a shore-line; which was done, the coast guardsmen on the cliffs fending the line clear of the bushes, and so passing it from one to another until it dangled over the ledge within grasp. The Commandant, as the taller, reached up for the gun, took it, and examined it by the light of the lantern which Mr. Rogers held for him.

The gun was undoubtedly the Lord Proprietor's; a breechloader of curiously fine workmanship, bearing the name of a famous St. James' Street maker. Of the hammers, one was down, the other at half-cock; and, pulling open the breech, the Commandant drew forth two cartridges, the one empty, the other unused. He pocketed these and examined the barrels. Clearly, one shot—and one only—had been fired since the gun was last cleaned.

He invited Mr. Rogers to verify these simple observations; and then, turning the gun over, was aware of a trace of earth on the trigger-guard and another on the point of the butt. These were easily accounted for. The weapon, no doubt, had slid for some distance down the cliff—probably from the very top—before lodging in the bushes where Leggo had found it.

Half an hour's exploration of the cave, the cove, the cliff-face, had yielded no further clue. Mr. Rogers drew off his men, and, embarking them, started to search the shore to the westward.

By this time some thirty boats had gathered, and through the long night, in every creek and cranny of the shore, from the extreme east of Inniscaw to the extreme west of Brefar, the search went on. The wind, chopping to the north-west, rose to a stiff breeze, and not only blew bitterly cold, with squalls of rain and sleet, but raised a sea that made it dangerous to explore the rocks closely. Nevertheless, not a single boat put back, and not a few took incredible risks.

Day broke—a dull smurr of gray in an interval between two sleet-laden squalls. In the cheerless light of it the Commandant, who, albeit numb with cold, had had not yet found time to feel fatigue, caught sight of Dr. Bonaday's face, and was smitten with sudden compunction. The old Doctor had sat through six distressful hours like the stoic he was; but his face showed like that of a corpse, and the usually plump and florid cheeks of Mr. Pope hung flaccid, blue with the pinch of the cold and yellow for lack of sleep. The Commandant spoke to the coxswain, and, running up the gig alongside the jolly-boat, suggested to the indomitable Mr. Rogers that the men were almost dead-beat, to which, indeed, the faces of all bore witness in the broadening daylight.

"We must not exhaust ourselves utterly," suggested Mr. Pope. "It is already day, and the Council of Twelve ought to meet before noon."