Among these concentric energies, Margaret and Miss Penny completed their own simple preparations, and Graeme busied himself with the details of the children's feast which was to take place in an adjacent field.

He went down to the harbour to meet the Tuesday morning's boat which was to bring over the fruit and frivolities ordered from Guernsey—strawberries enough to start a jam factory, grapes enough to stock a greengrocer's shop, chocolates, sweets, Christmas crackers and fancy biscuits, in what he hoped would prove sufficiency, but had his doubts at times when he saw the eager expectancy with which he was regarded by every youngster he met.

He was just starting out when Johnnie Vautrin hailed him from his lair in the hedge.

"Heh, Mist' Graeme! I seen—"

"Better not, Johnnie!" he said, with a warning finger. "If it's anything uncomfortable I'll come right over and jump on you and Marrlyou."

"Goderabetin, you dassen't!"

"Oh, dassen't I? If you don't see everything good for this week, and fine weather too, you little imp, I'll—"

"Que-hou-hou!" croaked Johnnie, and Marielihou yawned and made a futile attempt to wash behind her ears but found it discomforting to a sore hind-leg, so gave it up and spat at him instead.

"And, moreover, I won't have you at my party."

"Hou-hou! I'm coming. Ma'm'zelle she ask me."

"I'll tell her to send you back-word."

"She wun't, she wun't. Where you goin'?"

"To the harbour, to see if all the good things have come for the other little boys and girls."

"Oh la-la! Good things and bad things come by the boat. Sometime it'll sink and drown 'em all."

"Little rascal!" and he waved his hand and went on.

"Late, isn't she, Carre?" he asked, as he leaned over the sea-wall with the rest.

"She's late, sir."

"I hope nothing's happened to her. I'll never forgive her if she's made an end of my sweet things for the kiddies."

"She'll come."

And she came. With a shrill peal she came round the Burons and made for the harbour.

And Graeme, wedged into the corner of the iron railing where it looks out to sea, to make sure at the earliest possible moment that that which he had come to meet was there, met of a sudden more than he had looked for.

"Well ... I'll be hanged!" he jerked to himself, and then began to laugh internally.

For, standing on the upper deck of the small steamer, and looking, somehow, very much out of place there, was a tall but portly young gentleman, in a bowler hat and travelling coat and a monocle, whose face showed none of the usual symptoms of the Sark lover. To judge from his expression, the little island impressed him anything but favourably. It offered him none of the relaxations and amusements to which he was accustomed. It looked, on the face of it, an uncivilised kind of a place, out of which a man might be ejected without ceremony if he chose to make himself objectionable.

Graeme kept out of sight among the other crowders of the quay till the bowler hat came bobbing up the gangway. Then he smote its owner so jovially on the shoulder that his monocle shot the full length of its cord and the hat came within an ace of tumbling overboard.

"Hello, Pixley! This is good of you. You're just in time to give us your blessing."

"Aw! Hello!" said Charles Svendt, agape at the too friendly greeting. "That you, Graeme?"

"The worst half of me, my boy. Margaret's up at the house. You'll be quite a surprise to her."

"Aw!" said Charles Svendt thoughtfully, as he readjusted his eyeglass. "Demned queer place, this!" and he gazed round lugubriously.

"It is that, my boy. Queerer than you think, and queerer people."

"Aw! Is there any—aw—place to stop at?"

"Thinking of stopping over night? Oh yes, several very decent hotels."

"Aw! Which are you at yourself now?"

"I? Oh, I'm a resident. I've got a house here."

"Dooce you have! Well, now, where would you stop if you were me?"

"Well, if I were you I should stop at the Old Government House—"

"Right! Whereabouts is it?"

"It's over in Guernsey. Boat returns at five sharp."

"Aw! Quite so! Very good! But I've got—er—business here, don't you know."

"Oh? Thinking of opening a branch here? Well, there's Stock's—but I doubt if you'd fit in there—"

"Fit? Why not fit? Stocks are my line."

"I think I'd try the Bel-Air if I were you—"

"Which is nearest?" asked Charles Svendt, looking round depreciatively.

"Bel-Air. Just along the tunnel there—"

"Good Lord! Along the tunnel—"

"Excuse me for a moment. I've got some things coming by this boat. I must see to them," and Graeme sped away to attend to his frivolities.

XI

"And what special business brings you to Sark, Pixley?" asked Graeme, as they passed through the tunnel of rock and climbed the steep way of the Creux—its high banks masses of ferns, its hedges ablaze with honeysuckle and roses, its trees interwoven into a thick canopy overhead,—a living green tunnel shot with quivering sunbeams. All of which was lost on Charles Svendt, whose chest was going like a steam-pump and whose legs were quivering with the unusual strain. Graeme regretted that he had not been landed on the ladders at Havre Gosselin, where he himself came ashore. He would dearly have liked to follow the portly one up those ladders and heard his comments.

In reply to Graeme's question he shook his head mutely and staggered on—past the upper reaches, where the corded roots of the overhanging trees came thrusting through the banks like twisting serpents; past the wells of sweet water that lay dark and still below, and ran over into the road, and trickled away down the sides in little streams; out into the sunshine and the quickening of the breeze;—till he dropped exhausted into a chair outside the door of the Bel-Air.

He sat there panting for close on five minutes, with unaccustomed perspiration streaming down his red face, and then he said "Demn!" and proceeded to mop himself up with his handkerchief.

Then he held up a finger to a distant waiter in the dining-room, and when he came, murmured, "Whisky—soda—two," and fanned himself vigorously till they came.

"Better?" asked Graeme, as they nodded and drank.

"Heap better! What a demnable place to get into!"

"There are one or two other entrances—"

"Better?"

"No, worse."

"Demn!"

"Now," he said presently, when his heart had got back to normal and he had lit a cigarette. "Let's talk business. Am I in time?"

"For the wedding? Just in time. It's tomorrow."

"Aw—er—you know what I've come for, I suppose?"

"I can imagine, but you may as well save yourself useless trouble. You can't do anything."

"Think not?"

"Sure. English—I should say, British—law doesn't run here, and you've no locus standi if it did."

"She's under age and her guardian objects. I represent him."

"He can object all he wants to, and you can represent him all you want to. It won't make the slightest difference."

"I can appear at the ceremony and show cause why it should not proceed."

"What cause?"

"Her guardian objects. The parson would hardly proceed in face of my objection."

"I think you'll find he would. However, we'll go and ask him presently. We'll pay a visit to the Seigneur also."

"Who's the Seigneur?"

"Lord Paramount of the island. His word goes. If he chooses, as he probably will, to tell you to go also, you'll have to go."

"Demn'd if I will!"

"He'll see to that. He'll put the Senechal and the Greffier and the Prevot and the two constables and the Vingtenier on to you, and bundle you out like a sack of potatoes."

"Oh, come, Graeme! This is the twentieth century!"

"That's another of your little mistakes, my friend. I can't tell you just exactly what year it is here, but it's somewhere between 1066 and, say, 1200 A.D."

"Afraid I don't quite catch on."

"Exactly! That's why you'll be off in this scene. We're under feudal law here, with a mixture of Home Rule. We don't care twopence for your English courts, and as for English lawyers, they're not much liked here, I believe."

"Rum hole!" mused Charles Svendt.

"Rum hole to make yourself a nuisance in. Jolly place to be happy in."

"H'm!" And presently he asked, "Where are you stopping?"

"I'll go along and tell the girls you're here—"

"Girls?"

"Miss Penny came with Margaret—"

"Aw—Miss Penny!"

"You'd better have your lunch here. They'll give you lobsters fresh from the kettle, and I'll stroll round later on and we'll get this matter settled up. So long!" and he went away up the Avenue and across the fields home.

And he went thoughtfully. It was annoying this man cropping up like this at the eleventh hour. Nothing, he felt sure, would come of his interference, but it might disturb Margaret and the general harmony of to-morrow's proceedings.

Her wedding-day is a somewhat nervous time for a girl, under the best of circumstances, he supposed. And though Margaret was as little given to nerves as anyone he had ever met, the possibility of a public attempt to stop her wedding might be fairly calculated to upset her.

Feudal as were the laws of the island, he could hardly knock Pixley on the head, as would have happened in less anachronistic times. And so he went thoughtfully.

XII

Margaret and Miss Penny were lying in long chairs on the verandah when he came over the green wall into the Red House garden, by the same gap as he had used that first morning when he came upon Margaret standing in the hedge.

They were resting from labours, joyful, but none the less tiring.

"Jock, we were just wanting you!" said Margaret, sitting up. "Have all the things come all right?"

"All come all right," and he wondered how she would take his next announcement. "In fact more came than we expected."

"I guess we can use it all," said Miss Penny. "You've no idea of the capacity of children. I know something about it, and these children are more expansible even than school-girls."

"I was surprised to meet a gentleman down there who says he has come across on purpose for the wedding."

"A gentleman—come for the wedding?" and both girls eyed him as pictured terriers greet the word "Rats!"

"I'll give you three guesses."

"Mr. Pixley," said Miss Penny.

"Bull's-eye first shot! Clever girl!"

"Not really, Jock!" said Margaret, with a suspicion of dismay in her voice.

"Well, Charles Svendt anyway—as representing the old man, he says."

"But what has he come for, and how did he get to know?"

"I didn't ask him. It was quite enough to see him there. He says he's going to stop it,"—and Margaret's cheeks flamed,—"but I've assured him that he can't, and I'll take jolly good care that he doesn't, if I have to knock him on the head and drop him off the Coupee."

"It would be shameful of him if he tried," cried Miss Penny. "Just let me have a talk with him, Mr. Graeme, and I'll make him wish he'd never been born. He's really not such a bad sort, you know. Where is he?"

"I left him at the Bel-Air about to tackle lobsters. My idea is to take him to the Vicar, then to the Seigneur. They both understand the whole matter. I explained it fully when I told them we intended getting married here. When they understand that this is the gentleman who would like to occupy my place, and that he has no legal grounds for interfering, I think they will open his eyes—"

"I do hope he won't make any trouble in the church," said Margaret, with a little flutter.

"I'll promise you he won't."

"I'm sure he won't, if you can make it quite clear that it could not possibly accomplish what, I suppose, his father sent him to try to do," said Miss Penny. "Charles Pixley is no fool, though he has his little peculiarities."

"It would be a wonder if he hadn't some, after his daddie," said Graeme lightly. "I'm sorry he's come, Meg, but I'm certain you don't need to worry about him. If I could have knocked him on the head and dropped him in the sea and said nothing to nobody—"

"Don't be absurd, Jock," said Margaret, and her voice showed that the matter was troubling her in spite of his assurances.

"After lunch I shall call for him and take him for a little walk. If you'd seen him when he got to the Bel-Air after toiling up the Creux Road! He was nearly in pieces. I'll trot him round to the Vicarage, and then to the Seigneurie, and then I'll bring him here and turn him over to you and Hennie Penny. He'll be as limp as a rag by that time, and as wax in your hands."

Nevertheless, Margaret could not quite get rid of the feeling of discomfort which the news of Charles Pixley's arrival had cast over her, and Graeme anathematised that young man most fervently each time he glanced at her face.

XIII

After lunch Graeme went back to the hotel, and found Pixley lolling on the seat outside, in a much more contented frame of mind than on his first arrival.

"You were right as to their lobsters, anyhow, Graeme," he said. "They're almost worth coming all the way for."

"All right. Now if you're rested we'll go for a stroll, and I'll set your mind at rest as to to-morrow. Then you'll be able to enjoy your dinner in a proper frame of mind."

"How far is it?"

"Just up there and round the corner. We'll see the Vicar first and you can try your hand on him."

The Vicar received them with jovial bonhomie.

"Ah-ha! The bridegroom cometh out of his chamber! And your friend? He is the best man—no?"

"He's not quite made up his mind yet, Vicar. Perhaps you can persuade him to it."

"But it is an honour—n'est-ce pas? To attend so beautiful a bride to the altar—"

"Well, you see, the fact is—Mr. Pixley would have preferred reversing the positions. He would like to have been bridegroom and me to be best man."

"Ah—so! Well, it is not surprising—"

"Moreover, he would like to stop the wedding now if he could—"

"Ach, non! That is not possible," said the Vicar wrathfully, the southern blood blazing in his face. "What would you do, my good sir, and why?"

"Miss Brandt is my father's ward," said Pixley sturdily. "My father objects to this marriage. He has sent me over to stop it."

"I understand," said the Vicar. "He wished his ward to marry you, but Miss Brandt made her own choice, which she had a perfect right to do, and, ma foi—" leaning back in his chair and regarding the two faces in front of him, he did not finish his sentence in words, but contented himself with cryptic nods whose meaning, we may hope, was lost upon Charles Svendt's amour propre.

"And what would you do?" asked the Vicar presently.

"Well, if necessary, I can get up in the church and state that there is just cause for stopping the marriage—"

"What just cause, I should ask you?"

"I have told you. My father—"

"I would not listen. I would order them to put you out—to carry you out, if necessary, for making dis-turb-ance in my church. I would tell them to sit on you in the churchyard till the wedding was over. What good would you do? Ach, non! Be advised, my good sir, and re-linquish any such in-tention. It will ac-complish nothing and only lead to your own con-fusion."

"My father is applying to have Miss Brandt made a ward in Chancery—"

"By that time she will be Mrs. Graeme, and I am sure very happy," shrugged the Vicar. "Non—you can do nothing, and, if you will be guided, you will not try."

And Charles Svendt lapsed into thoughtfulness.

XIV

"This is the Seigneurie," said Graeme, as they turned off the road, through the latched gate, into the deep-shaded avenue.

The Seigneur came to them in the Long Drawing-Room, where once upon a time the peacocks danced on the Queen's luncheon.

"Your time is getting short, Mr. Graeme," he said, with a quiet smile. "I hear of great doings in preparation at St. Magloire"—which was the official title of the Red House. "Have you given the doctor fair warning?"

"Oh, we'll try to keep them within bounds, Seigneur. My friend, Mr. Pixley here,"—the Seigneur made Mr. Pixley a seigneurial bow,—"has it in his mind to stop the proceedings if he can—"

"Oh?" said the Seigneur, with a glower of surprise. "And why?"

"Well, you see," said Pixley, "Miss Brandt is under age. She is my father's ward and he has other views for her—"

"Which obviously do not agree with Miss Brandt's."

"That is as it may be. But she is acting absolutely in opposition to his expressed wishes in this matter, and until she is of age she is under his authority."

"Just as far as he is in position to exert it, I presume."

"He is now applying to have her made a ward in Chancery, when, of course, she will be under the jurisdiction of the court."

"If you come to me, Mr. Pixley, when Miss Brandt is a ward of court, I will tell you now what my answer would be. I should tell you that your English court has no jurisdiction here. Miss Brandt is out of bounds and is quite free to do as she pleases. I have had the pleasure of making her acquaintance and Mr. Graeme's, and I should be sorry—for you—if you did anything to annoy them. In fact—" and he looked so fixedly at Charles Svendt, while evidently revolving some extreme idea in his mind, that that young gentleman's assurance fell several degrees, and he found himself thinking of dungeons and deportation.

It was to Graeme, however, that the Seigneur turned.

"If you have any reason to fear annoyance in this matter, Mr. Graeme, perhaps you will let me know as early as possible, and I will take measures—"

"Thousand thanks, Seigneur! Mr. Pixley will, I hope, think better of it. If not—well, I will send you word."

XV

Pixley was very silent as they walked back along the road to the Red House.

The ladies had tea ready on the verandah.

"Well, Charles," said Margaret, as he bowed before them, and Graeme nodded and smiled reassuringly at her over his back, "I won't pretend that I'm glad to see you. Why did you undertake so foolish an errand?"

"Perhaps Mr. Pixley could hardly help himself," said Miss Penny, sympathising somewhat with the awkwardness of his position.

"That is so," he said, with a grateful glance at her. "You see, the governor is crazy wild over this matter. It was only Sunday night he heard of it. A friend of young Greatorex wrote him that he'd heard your banns put up, and Greatorex congratulated the governor after church, and the governor nearly had a fit. He came over to my place like a whirlwind and practically ordered me to come across instanter and stop it. I may say," he said, looking at Margaret, "I tried to reason with him. I told him he must know that if you'd gone that length I was out of it, and nothing he could do would alter matters. But he would not hear a word. He simply raved until I promised to come over by first boat and see what could be done."

"You've only done your duty, Mr. Pixley," said Miss Penny. "But you simply can't stop it, so is it any good making any trouble? Put it on the highest grounds. You have had warmer feelings for Meg than she could reciprocate. You can possibly make some disturbance at her wedding, which would be painful to her and utterly useless to yourself. Is it worth while?"

"No, I'm dem—er—hanged if it is! I see I can do no good, and I'll be hammered if I'll play dog in the manger, even to oblige the governor. It's a disappointment to me, you know,"—he was looking at Miss Penny's bright face, surcharged with deepest sympathy.

"Of course it is," she said gently. "But a strong man bears his disappointments without wincing. I think you're acting nobly."

"Say, Graeme, will you have me as best man?"

"Delighted, my dear fellow. Miss Penny has been breaking her heart at thought of having no partner at the ceremony."

"Right! Then we'll say no more about it. How did you all come to meet here? Put-up job?"

"Not a bit of it," said Graeme. "Pure coincidence—or Providence, we'll say. You remember that Whitefriars' dinner, when Adam Black sat opposite to us? He was just back from Sark, and he said, 'If ever you want relief from your fellows—try Sark.' Well, later on, I had no reason to believe there was anything between you and Margaret, and I called on your father at his office. He sliced me into scraps with his eye-glass and flung the bits out into Lincoln's Inn,"—at which Charles Svendt grinned amusedly, as though he were familiar with the process.—"I wanted to get away somewhere to piece up again. Sark came into my head, and I came. A month later my landlady told me she had let my rooms to two ladies, as she had understood I was only stopping for a month, and I had to turn out and come up here. And, to my vast amazement, the two ladies proved to be Margaret and Miss Penny. How is that for coincidence?"

"I was standing in the hedge there," said Margaret, "early in the morning of the day after we got here, and Jock came leaping over the dyke there with a great brown dog, and stopped as if he'd been shot—"

"I thought you were a ghost, you see."

"And I couldn't believe my eyes. Then I asked him what he meant by following us here, and it turned out that it was we who had followed him, and turned him out of his cottage moreover."

"Deuced odd!" said Charles Svendt, screwing in his eye-glass and regarding them comprehensively. "Almost makes one believe in—er—"

"Telepathy and that kind of thing," said Miss Penny.

"Er—exactly—just so, don't you know!" and his glance rested on her with appreciation as upon a kindred soul.

XVI

Charles Svendt dined with them that evening, and in the process developed heights and depths of genial common-sense which quite surprised some among them.

They took him for a stroll up to the Eperquerie in the cool of the gloaming, and showed him more shooting stars than ever he had seen in his life, and a silver sickle of a moon, and a western sky still smouldering with the afterglow of a crimson and amber sunset, and he acknowledged that, from some points of view, Sark had advantages over Throgmorton Street.

In the natural course of things, Margaret and Graeme walked together, and since they could not go four abreast among the gorse cushions, Charles Svendt and Miss Penny had to put up with one another, and seemed to get on remarkably well. More than once Graeme squeezed Margaret's arm within his own and chuckled, as he heard the animated talk and laughter from the pair behind.

"I'm very glad he's taken a sensible view of the matter," said Margaret.

"Oh, Charles Svendt is no fool, and he certainly would have been if he'd done anything but what he has done. He saw that he could do no good and might get into trouble. The Seigneur scowled dungeons and gibbets at him, and he looked decidedly uncomfortable."

"I will tender the Seigneur my very best thanks the first time I see him."

When the men had seen the ladies home, they strolled up the garden to the Red House for a final smoke.

"Say, Graeme, I've been wondering what you'd have done if I'd played mule and persisted in kicking up my heels in church. I asked Miss Penny—and, by Jove, I tell you, that's about as sensible a girl as I've met for a long time—"

"Miss Penny is an extremely clever girl and an exceptionally fine character. Good family too. Her father was the Brigadier-General Penny who was killed in Afghanistan."

"So?"

"She's an M.A., and she's worked like a slave to educate her brothers and sisters, and they're all turning out well. I don't know any girl, except Meg, of whom I think so highly as Hennie Penny."

"Henrietta?"

Graeme nodded.

"Well now," said Pixley presently. "As a matter of information, what was in your mind to do if I'd gone on?"

"You'd never have got as far as the church, my boy."

"No? Why?"

"If the Seigneur hadn't stopped you, I would. But I'm inclined to think he'd have seen to you all right."

"By Jove, he looked it! What would he have done?"

"Confined you as a harmless lunatic till the ceremony was over, I should say, and then sent you home with the proverbial insect in your ear."

"And if he hadn't?"

"Then I should have taken matters into my own hands and bottled you up till you couldn't do any mischief. You could have hauled me before the court here, and I'd probably have been fined one and eightpence. It would have been worth the money, and cheap at the price, simply to see the proceedings."

"It's an extraordinary place this."

"It's without exception the most delightful little place in the world."

"Jolly nice house you've got here too. Think of stopping long?"

"Some months probably. The curious thing about Sark is that the longer you stop the longer you want to stop. It grows on you. First week I was here it seemed to me very small—felt afraid of walking fast lest I should step over the edge, and all that kind of thing. Now that I've been here a couple of months it is growing bigger every day. I'm not sure that one could know Sark under a lifetime. We'll take you round in a boat and show it you from the outside."

"I'll have to get back, I'm sorry to say. You see, I started at a moment's notice. Things are duller than a ditch in the City, but I'd no chance to make any arrangements for a stay. But I'll tell you what. If you're stopping on here and like to send me an invitation for a week or two, I'd come like a shot. I'll take a carriage up that road from the harbour, though, next time. Jove! I felt like a convict on the treadmill."

"You have the invitation now, my boy, and we'll be delighted to see you whenever it suits you to come."

"That's very good of you. Miss Penny be stopping on with you?"

"As long as she will. She'd got a bit run down and it's done her a heap of good."

"Well, if you'll show me how to go, I'll toddle off home now. I haven't the remotest idea where my digs are."

And Graeme led him through the back fields among the tethered cows, who stopped their slow chewing as they passed, and lay gazing after them in blank astonishment, into the Avenue and so to the Bel-Air.

"I'll come round then a bit before eleven and we'll all go along together," was Charles Svendt's parting word.

"Right! Au revoir!" and Graeme went home across the fields smiling happily to himself.

XVII

When Graeme came swinging over the green dyke in the early morning, with his towel round his neck and his two dogs racing in front, he found the Seigneur sitting in a long chair in the verandah, with four aristocratic dogs wandering about, who proceeded to intimate to Punch and Scamp that they were rather low fisher-dogs and not of seigneurial rank.

"Well, what about your would-be breaker of the peace?" asked the Seigneur, with a smile.

"He's come to his senses. I was going to bring you word as soon as I thought you'd be up. He's promised to be best man, and I'm hoping to get him to play heavy father also and give the bride away."

"Capital!"

"He was very anxious last night to know what would have happened if, as he put it, he'd persisted in playing mule and kicking up his heels in church."

"We'd have tied his heels so that he couldn't kick much," said the Seigneur, with his deep quizzical smile.

"That's what I told him. He seemed to think Sark a decidedly odd kind of place. But he's getting to like it, and I've invited him to come and visit us later on."

"That's all right as long as he behaves himself."

"Oh, he's a very decent chap. The only thing I had against him was that he wanted to marry my wife."

"Then all the ways are smooth now?"

"All smooth now, thanks to your assistance!"

"Well, all happiness to you both!" said the Seigneur as he rose. "My wife sends all good wishes"—for the Lady of the Manor lay sick in the great house among the trees and he would not leave her.

XVIII

As Graeme proposed, they talk still of that wedding in Sark.

Everything went smoothly. The Vicar had coached himself, by wifely tuition and much private repetition, into a certain familiarity with the Wedding Service in English, but would still have been more at home with it in French.

The church was more crowded than it had been within the memory of woman. Margaret looked charming, and Miss Penny absolutely pretty. Charles Svendt could hardly take his eyes off her, and caught himself wondering what the dooce she had done to herself since last night. For, by Jove! she's as pretty almost as Margaret herself—he said to himself.

And if Jeremiah Pixley could have seen his son, in fatherly fashion give away the bride that should have been his, he would without doubt have had fits—if the first one had not been of such a character as to obviate the necessity for any additional ones.

The habitants, old and young, had made holiday, donned their best as if it were Sunday, and crowded the church as if it were all the Sundays of the year rolled into one.

The Vicar had serious thoughts of improving so unique an occasion, but wisely decided to confine himself to the intricacies of the English language as displayed in The Form of the Solemnisation of Matrimony.

Mrs. Vicar presided at the harmonium, which had been specially tuned for the occasion, and the choir enjoyed to the full their privileges of position and observation and made ample use of them.

And when his friends knelt before the chancel rail,—to the exceeding scandal of the Vicar and Mrs. Vicar and the choir and all who saw, and to the vast enjoyment of Miss Penny and Charles Svendt and all the other youngsters in the place,—Punch walked solemnly up the aisle and stood behind them, with slow-swinging tail and a look of anticipation on his gravely interested face, while outside, Scamp, in the hands of some enterprising stickler for forms and ceremonies, rent the air with sharp cries of disappointment.

But John Graeme's soul, uplifted mightily within him at this glorious consummation of his hopes, and ranging high among the stars, saw none of these things. He held Margaret's hand in his, and looked into her radiant and blushing face, and vowed mighty vows for her happiness, and thanked God fervently for bringing this great thing to pass.

And Margaret's eye caught the marble slab, placed in the side wall of the chancel by the late Seigneur who built it, and prayed in her heart that the temple of their two lives might equally be builded—"to the Glory of God and with much care."

XIX

The small girls from the school, all specially arrayed in fancy white pinafores with knots of pink ribbon, burst out of the church like a merry bombshell while the less picturesque final ceremonies were being completed. When Graeme and Margaret came smiling down the aisle, the busy little maids were still vociferously strewing the path outside with green rushes and wild iris, and as they passed, those who had emptied their baskets ran back and picked up hasty armfuls of the scattered flowers, and ran on in front and strewed them again, so that for quite a long way their progress was one of gradually diminishing splendour.

But past the gap in the road, which led across country to the Red House, no flower-strewers came. For there the excited chatterers broke and whirled through like a flight of sea-pies, and made straight for the field of more substantial delights lest the boys should secure all the best places.

The wedding-party, however, having disdained the use of carriages for so short a distance, strolled quietly along the scented lanes, past the Boys' School, and by the Carrefour, with no apprehension of the feast beginning until they arrived, or of being relegated to back seats if they were late.

The cottage and the Red House had been buzzing hives since dawn, Mrs. Carre handling her forces and volunteers and supernumeraries with the skill of a veteran, and with encouragement so shrill and animated that it sounded like scolding, but was in reality only emphatic patois.

She had, indeed, left matters in the hands of certain tried elders while she sped across the fields to the church for a few minutes, just to see that everything there was done properly and in order. But she was back in the thick of things before the wedding-party reached home, and everything was ready and in apple-pie order for a merry-making such as Sark had not seen for many a day.

First, the children were settled at their long tables in the field behind the house, with good things enough in front of them, and active assistants enough behind them, to keep them quiet for a good long time to come.

Graeme and Margaret went round bidding them all enjoy themselves to their fullest, which they cheerfully promised to do, and the eager youngsters gave them back wish for wish, with one eye for them and one for the unusual dainties on the tables.

"Hello, Johnnie!" said Graeme to that young man, gorging stolidly, with a palpable interval between him and his neighbour on either hand, but with no other visible signs of wizardry about him. "Getting on all right?"

But there was no room for speech in Johnnie's mouth just then. He winked one black eye solemnly and devoted himself to the business in hand.

And Punch and Scamp, accepted favourites of the host and hostess, tore to and fro in vain attempt to keep pace with all the attentions lavished upon them by the guests as soon as their own desires had been satisfied. They devoured everything that was offered and attainable before it was withdrawn, and had no need to ask for more unless in the matter of storage-room.

Everybody was very happy and very excited, for no such feast had been in Sark within the memory of the oldest child present. And if Charles Svendt's Stock-Exchange friends could have seen him—merrily circling the tables and exhorting already distent youngsters to still greater and greater exertions; poking them in the ribs to prove, against their own better judgment, but in accordance with their inclinations, that there was assuredly still room for more; bidding them "Mangez! Mangez!" in the one word of French he could recall as specially applicable at the moment—it is certain they would not have known him.

And Miss Penny, too, looked as if she had never enjoyed herself so much in her life, and backed him up in all his endeavours right heartily. And now and again, when Charles Svendt looked at her, he said to himself, "By Jove, she's as good-looking a girl as I know, and as clever as they make 'em!"

For there is no greater beautifier in the world than happiness, and Hennie Penny was completely and quite unusually happy.

To the actual wedding-feast, Graeme had asked the Vicar and his wife, and such of the neighbours as he had come to know personally, especially not forgetting his very first friend in the island, whom he still always called Count Tolstoi, and Mrs. De Carteret. For the rest, he had given Mrs. Carre carte-blanche to invite whom she deemed well among her friends, and she had exercised her privilege with judgment and enjoyment.

The Senechal was there, and the Greffier, and the Prevot and the members of the Court, ex officio, so to speak, and the Wesleyan minister who was on excellent terms with the Vicar, and the Post-Master and his jovial white-haired father, who built the boats and coffins for the community, and had supplied the tables for the feast; and many more—a right goodly company of stalwart, weather-browned men and pleasant-faced women, all vastly happy to be assisting at so unusual an event as an English wedding.

They drank the health of the bride and bridegroom in the special mulled wine thereto ordained by custom and prepared according to the laws of the Medes and Persians. And Graeme, on behalf of himself and his wife, assured them that there was no place in the world like Sark, and that they had never enjoyed a wedding so much in all their lives, and that if they had to be married a hundred times they could wish no happier wedding than Sark had given them.

And of all that company, none beamed more brightly, nor enjoyed himself more, than Charles Pixley, who, having come to curse, had, in most approved fashion, stayed to bless, and had even beaten the prophet's record by giving away to another the treasure he had desired for himself.

In the usual course of things, after the feasting would have come games and songs until dark. But that had been adjudged too much of an ordeal by the ladies, and the onus of it was laid upon the youngsters outside. While Margaret and Miss Penny rested from their labours, and Mrs. Carre and her helpers cleared the rooms for the festivities of the evening, and prepared the milder and more intermittent refections necessary thereto, Graeme and Pixley and the Vicar and others set the children to games and races, for which indeed their previous exertions at the tables had not best fitted them, but which nevertheless, or perhaps on that very account, were provocative of much laughter and merriment.

Then, when it grew dark, and the reluctant youngsters had been cajoled and dragged and packed off to bed, the hitherto-unprovided-for section—the young men and maidens, all in their best and a trifle shy to begin with—came flocking in for their share in the festivities, and Orpheus and Terpsichore held the floor for the rest of the night.

And they did dance! Margaret and Miss Penny and Graeme and Pixley thought they had seen dancing before, but dancing such as this it had never been theirs to witness.

If it lacked anything in grace—and far be it from me to say so—it more than made up for all by its inexhaustible energy and tireless enjoyment. The men had brought their own music in the shape of a concertina, which passed from hand to hand and with which they all seemed on equally friendly terms.

Jokes, laughter, round dances, refreshments, interludes of smokings and gigglings in the darkness of the verandah, occasional more intellectual flights in the shape of songs and recitations,—mostly of a somewhat lugubrious tendency, to judge by the faces of the auditors, but being mostly in patois they were unintelligible to the British foreigners,—more dances,—coats off now, to reduce the temperature of the performers,—more refreshments, more dances,—dances with broomsticks held between the partners, over which they slipped and skipped to the tune of caustic comments by the onlookers,—dances between caps laid on the floor and which must on no account be touched by the dancers. And always the cry to the musician of the moment was,—"Faster! Faster!"—and the race between Orpheus and Terpsichore—between the music and the flying feet, grew still more fast and furious.

Now Charles Svendt, as we know, did not look like a dancing man, but dancing was one of the superficial accomplishments in which he excelled.

Miss Penny, also, through much experience with girls, was lighter of foot than she looked.

They stood for a time watching, and presently both their feet were tapping to the quickstep of the rest.

"Let's have a shot at it," said Charles. "Will you?" and he looked down at her.

"I'd love to," and in a moment they were whirling in the circle with the rest, but with a grace that none there could rival,—gallant dancers as the Sark boys and girls are.

"Delightful!" murmured Charles Svendt. "You dance like an angel, and we fit splendidly," and Hennie Penny found a man's arm about her decidedly and delightfully more inspiriting than all the arms of all the schoolgirls in the world, and danced as she had never danced before.

So swift and light and smooth and graceful was their flight that before long the rest tailed off and all stood propped against the walls to watch them.

"We've got the floor all to ourselves," murmured Miss Penny at last, as she woke to the fact.

"We've licked them into fits on their own ground," he laughed in her ear. "You can dance and no mistake. It's a treat to dance with a really good dancer."

"I think we ought to stop. We're stopping their fun," said Hennie Penny, and when he led her to a seat the rest of the room all clapped their enjoyment.

Graeme and Margaret danced a round or two to endorse the festivities, but they were not in it with Pixley and Hennie Penny, and they soon dropped out and clapped heartily with the rest.

When Charles Svendt, later on, suggested another dance, Miss Penny bade him go and dance with one of the Sark girls.

"But I don't want to dance with any of them. Besides, I don't know any of 'em, and I couldn't talk to her if I did."

"Oh yes, you can. They all speak English."

"Do they now? It don't sound like it. Come on, Miss Penny. They wouldn't enjoy it and I wouldn't enjoy it, and I never enjoyed anything so much in my life as that last round."

So Hennie took pity on him, and they danced many times amid great applause.

"Awfully good of you!" said Charles Svendt, as the dawn came peeping in through the east windows and the open front door; and Mrs. Carre, as Mistress of the Ceremonies, and a very tired one at that, bluffly informed the company that it was time to go home.

"I've enjoyed it immensely," said Hennie Penny, and if her face was any index to her feelings, there was no mistake about it.

XX

None of them will ever forget that great day.

Still less is any of them likely to forget the day that followed.

As dancing only ceased when the sun was about rising, before-breakfast bathing was declared off for that day, and they arranged to meet later on and stroll quietly down to Dixcart Bay during the morning and all bathe together there. Charles Svendt laughingly prepared them for an exhibition of incompetence by stating that his swimming wasn't a patch on his dancing, but that he could get along. Miss Penny gaily gave him points as to her own peculiar methods of swimming, which, as we know, demanded instant and easy touch of sand or stone at any moment of the halting progression. He confessed to a like prejudice in favour of something solid within reach of his sinking capacity, and they agreed to help one another.

They called for him at the hotel about eleven o'clock, and went joking through the sunny lanes of Petit Dixcart, crossed the brook that runs out of Hart's-Tongue Valley, and followed it by the winding path along the side of the cliff, among the gorse and ferns, down into the bay.

They had a right merry bathe with no grave casualties. Miss Penny, indeed, got out of her depth twice, to the extent of quite two inches, and shrieked for help, which Charles Svendt gallantly hastened to render; while Graeme and Margaret swam across from head to head, watched enviously by the paddlers in shallow waters.

They went home by the climbing path up the hillside, rested on The Quarter-deck while Charles Svendt got his breath back, and so, by the old Dixcart hotel, and the new one nestling among its flowers and trees, and up the Valley, to the Vicarage.

The Vicar was basking in the shade of the trees in front of the house.

"Ah-ha—Mr. and Mrs. Graeme! Good-morning! You are none the worse for being married? Non?" as he shook hands joyously all round, with both hands at once.

"Not a bit," laughed Graeme. "We're all as happy as sandboys."

"Comment donc—sandboys? What is that?"

"Happy little boys who dispense with clothes and paddle all day in the sand and water."

"Ah—you have been bathing! What energie! And you danced till—?"

"About four o'clock, I suppose. The sun was just thinking of rising as we were thinking of retiring."

"But it is marvellous! And you are not tired?"

"The bathe has freshened us all up," said Margaret.

Then Mrs. Vicar came out at sound of their voices, and felicitated them, and begged them to rest a while in the shade. But they were all hungry, and Charles Svendt laughingly asserted that he had swallowed so much salt-water, in rescuing Miss Penny from a watery grave, that his constitution absolutely needed a tiny tot of whisky, or the consequences might be serious.

So they went laughingly on their way, and Charles tried his best to get Miss Penny to go and show him the way to the Bel-Air, pleading absolute confusion still as to the points of the compass and the lie of the land.

He was to lunch with them at the Red House, but insisted on going home first to straighten up and make himself presentable. So they led him to the Avenue, and set his face straight down it, and bade him follow his nose and turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, and then they turned off through the fields by their own short-cut, and went merrily home.



PART THE SIXTH

I

Graeme was just finishing a beautiful knot in his tie, when he heard hasty feet crossing the verandah to the open front door. There was some unknown quantity in them that gave him sudden start.

"Graeme!" sharp, hoarse,—a voice he did not recognise.

He ran hastily out of the east bedroom, which he was using as a dressing-room.

"Hello there!" as he sprang down the stairs, "Why—Pixley? What's wrong, man?"

For Charles Pixley was standing there, leaning in at the doorway, looking as though he would fall headlong but for the supporting jamb. He had a brown envelope in his hand and a crumpled pink telegram. His face was white, and drawn, and haggard. His very figure seemed to have shrunk in these few minutes. Never had Graeme seen so ghastly a change in a man in so short a time.

Before Pixley could speak Miss Penny came hurrying along the path with a face full of sympathetic anxiety.

"What is it?" she asked. "I saw Mr. Pixley pass, and his face frightened me. Oh, what is wrong?"

Pixley glanced at her out of his woeful eyes, and at Margaret, who had just come running down the stairs. He seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then he groaned—

"You will have to know," and motioned them all into the dining-room and shut the door.

"This "—jerking out the telegram—"was waiting for me," and he handed it to Graeme, who smoothed it out and read, while Pixley dropped into a chair.

"Pixley. Bel-Air. Sark.

"Zizel, Amadou, Zebu, Zeta. Eno."

"Code," said Pixley briefly. "Meanings underneath," and dropped his head into his hands.

"Zizel," read Graeme slowly—"There is bad news. Amadou—your father. Zebu—has bolted. Zeta—we fear the smash will be a bad one. Eno—?"

"My partner's initials—they certify the wire," said Pixley hoarsely.

And they looked soberly at one another and very pitifully at the broken man before them.

"Don't take it too hard, Pixley," said Graeme quietly, laying a friendly hand on the other's shoulder. "It may not be as bad as this puts it. Codes are brutally bald things, you know"

The bowed head shook pitifully. He raised his white face and looked round at them with a shocked shrinking in his eyes.

"God forgive him!" he jerked. "And God forgive me, for I have doubted him at times! He was so—so—so demned good"—and Graeme's lips twitched in spite of himself, so closely was the expression in accord with his own feelings. But Pixley did not see the twitch, for he was looking at Margaret and Hennie Penny, and he was saying with vehemence—

"Will you believe me that I knew absolutely nothing of this? He never discussed his affairs with me nor I mine with him, and we had no business together except on purely business lines. If he had to buy or sell he sent it my way, of course,—nothing more. You will believe me, Graeme—"

"Every word, my boy—"

"We all believe it, Mr. Pixley," said Hennie Penny warmly.

"And I know it, Charles," said Margaret.

"It is very good of you all," he groaned. "I must get back at once, Graeme. How soon is there a boat?"

"Five o'clock. You'll have to stop a night in Guernsey, which is a nuisance."

Charles Svendt shook his head in dumb misery. It was crushing to be so far away—thirty hours at least, and he gnashing within to be on the spot and at work, learning the worst, seeing what could be done.

Then, with a preliminary knock on the door, Mrs. Carre came in with brilliant lobsters and crisp lettuces for lunch, and, hungry as they all were, their souls loathed the thought of eating.

"They are just out of the pot," beamed she, "and the lettuces were growing not five min'ts ago. Ech!"—at sight of Pixley—"is he ill?"

"Mr. Pixley has just had bad news from home, Mrs. Carre," said Graeme. "He will have to go by to-day's boat."

"Ach, but I am sorry! And him so happy yesterday and dancing the best in the room," and her pleasant face clouded sympathetically.

"Meg, I'll go up to your room for a minute and finish my hair," said Hennie Penny. "I ran out just as I was—"

"It was very kind of you," said Charles Svendt, and the general sympathy seemed to comfort him somewhat.

"No good feeling too bad about it, old man, till you know all the facts," said Graeme, when the girls had gone off upstairs.

"It hits me, Graeme. Not financially, as I said. But in every other way it hits me hard.—Have you reached the point of seeing that it may hit her too?"—and he nodded towards upstairs.

"I suppose there was a glimmering idea of the chance of that at the back of my head somewhere, but we won't trouble about it just now. How about your mother?"

Pixley shook his head dismally again. "It will be a terrible blow to her. He was a bit hard and cold at home, you know, but she looked up to him as immaculate. Yes, it will hit her very hard. As to money, of course, she will be all right. I have plenty. But the talk and the scandal—" and he groaned again at thought of it all.

"Send her over here for a time—or bring her yourself. We have heaps of room here. Miss Penny is coming to stop with us next week. Your mother was always fond of Margaret, I believe."

"She was—very fond of her.... That's a good thought of yours, Graeme. Are you sure Margaret—?"

"Of course she would. She and Miss Penny will just take care of her, and no word of the troubles will reach her. That's the thing to do, and maybe you'll find things not as bad as you expect when you get back."

But, from the look of him, Charles Svendt had small hope of matters being anything but what he feared.

When the girls came down they made an apology of a meal, for, in spite of their hunger, the stricken look of their friend took their appetites away.

The thought that there might still lurk in their minds a suspicion that he had had some knowledge of his father's position, when he came across to stop their marriage, still troubled him.

"I do hope you will all believe me when I say that I knew absolutely nothing of it all," he said, when they had finished an almost silent meal. "When I said I had doubted him at times, I simply meant that his everlasting and—and—well, very assertive philanthropies palled upon me. It was a little difficult at times to believe in the genuineness of it all, for we did not see very much of it at home, as you know,"—he looked at Margaret, who nodded. "In business matters he could be as hard as nails, and it was not easy to fit it all together."

"Not one of us believes anything of the kind of you, old man. Just get that right out of your head, once for all. We're only sorry for your sake that the trouble has come, and I'm sure we all hope it will turn out not so bad as you fear," said Graeme heartily.

"What about your mother, Charles?" said Margaret. "I'm afraid she will feel this dreadfully. Hennie and I were talking about it upstairs, and we were wondering if you could get her to come and stop with us for a time—"

"You see!" said Graeme, with a smile at Pixley. And to Margaret—"I suggested exactly the same thing while you were up doing your hair."

"It's awfully good of you all," said Charles. "If you're quite sure—"

"We're quite sure. Send her to us at once as soon as you reach home, and Jock shall meet her in Guernsey."

"I think I'd perhaps better bring her across myself. I don't suppose there will be much I can do when I've heard the worst—if they've got to it yet. Things may be all tangled up, and it may take time. And for ten days or so, until folks have had time to forget, the name of Pixley won't be one to be proud of."

"Come if you can," said Graeme heartily. "You've seen nothing of Sark yet."

II

They all went down to the harbour to see him off—as is the custom when one's friends leave Sark. And when Charles Svendt had shaken hands with Margaret and Miss Penny—and had found a touch of comfort in the sympathetic droop of their faces—and had fancied Miss Penny's bright eyes were at once brighter and mistier than usual—and had thanked them again very humbly for all their kindness—he turned to say good-bye to Graeme.

"Come away, man!" said Jock cheerfully. "I'm coming too. Meg's given me a holiday, and I'm going to shake a free leg again in Guernsey—"

But Charles thought he saw through that.

"Don't you come on my account, Graeme"

"Not on your account at all, my boy, but the accounts of a good many shopkeepers over there which I've got to straighten out at once, while all the little differences are fresh in my mind. Something wrong in nearly all of them—some over, some under—and I'm still a bit of a business man though I do write books."

For, when Pixley went off to pack his portmanteau, Graeme had said to his wife, "Meg dear, what do you think of my going across to Peter Port with that young man? He'll have a bad black time all by himself. He's holding himself in before us, but when he's alone it'll all come back on him in a heap and he'll feel it."

And Margaret had said, "Yes, dear, go. You'll be a great comfort to him. I am very very sorry for him."

The last flicker of the waving handkerchiefs above the sea-wall, and their responsive wavings from the boat, had been abruptly cut by the intervening bastion of Les Laches, but Charles Svendt still leaned with his arms on the rail and looked back as though he could pierce the granite cliff and see the girls still standing there, and Graeme stood patiently behind him.

He straightened up at last with a sigh.

"I'm glad I came," he said, "though if I'd had any idea what was going to happen I'd have drowned myself first. It's when one's in trouble"—as though this were a discovery of his own—"that one finds out how kind people can be."

"Yes, trouble has its uses. I had a deuce of a time for the first few weeks after I got here. Your dad had told me you and Margaret were to be married very shortly, and it knocked life into a cocked-hat for me—"

"That's what he would have liked. Do you know, Graeme, I've been thinking that it's just possible your marriage helped to precipitate matters with him. I don't know, of course; but if he has been juggling her money in any way, he may have been counting on a marriage between us to help straighten things. Then, when he heard nothing from me—"

"It's possible. But if it acted as quickly as all that, I'm afraid the chances for Margaret's portion are pretty small."

"Gad! That would hurt me more than anything. I shall do everything in my power—"

"I'm sure of it, my dear fellow. And you must understand that her money—whatever it is—has never entered into our calculations in any way. I knew nothing of it till Lady Elspeth Gordon told me, and I had it all settled on her before the wedding took place. If it is gone we can do without it."

And Charles Svendt, if he said nothing, thought all the more.

III

The two girls were standing in the outermost seaward corner of the breakwater, as though they had never moved, when the Assistance came nosing round Les Laches next morning, and made for the harbour. And to Graeme, the sight of his wife, after a separation of eighteen hours, was like a life-giving stream to a pilgrim of the desert, or the blessing of light to a darkened soul. His heart swelled almost to paining-point for very joy of her. He took deep breaths of gratitude for this sweet crowning of his life. He wondered vaguely why he should be so blest above all other men. He vowed his vows again and his eyes were misty.

They saw him standing by the captain, and waved glad welcomes, and presently, his glimpse into the depths of Margaret's eyes as he kissed her, told him that he had been missed even as he had missed.

"I am glad I went with him," he said, as they climbed the steep Creux Road. "It did him good to talk. He's feeling it terribly."

He did not tell them that they had got the previous day's papers in St. Peter Port, and that their scathing comments on a peculiarly bad failure, and on the remarkable contrast between the profession and the practice of Jeremiah Pixley's life, had driven Charles Svendt almost crazy. The wound was raw in their hearts. There was no need to turn the knife in it.

"We shall see him back here with Mrs. Pixley before the middle of next week, unless I'm very much mistaken," he said. "He says there's nothing doing on the Stock Exchange, and he can fix things with his partner to get away for a time, and it seems the wisest thing to do."

"I have liked Charles better this time than I ever did in my life before," said Margaret. "And I am very very sorry for him and Mrs. Pixley."

"He's not half a bad fellow," said Graeme heartily.

And perhaps, if it had been put to Miss Penny, she would have improved even upon that.

"I hope you're not very set on being a rich woman, Meg," said Graeme, when they were alone together.

"Oh, but I am," she said, with a smile which all the riches in the world could not have bought from her, or brought to her.

"Yes, I know,"—and he gathered the smile with a kiss. "But in coarse material wealth, I mean."

"I'm just as set on it as you are. I want just as much as will make you happy. You mean Mr. Pixley has made away with it all?"

"I'm very much afraid so, but I guess we can get along all right without it."

"Of course we can—splendidly. I'm a famous housekeeper and you'll be a famous author. There couldn't be a better team. It will bring out the very best that's in us."

"We can never come to actual want anyway, for my little bit—which, by the way, Lady Elspeth once took the trouble to impress upon me was just about enough to pay Mr. Pixley's servants' wages—is in Consols, and they're not likely to crack up. And my last book brought me about fifty pounds—"

"It ought to have brought you five thousand. I'm sure it was good enough."

"Of course it was, but it takes time to work up to the five thousand point. Some get there, I suppose. But I should imagine more starve off at the fifty line."

"We could live like princes on a couple of hundred a year in Sark here."

"It would pall on you in time, I'm afraid."

"You've been here twice as long as I have. Has it begun to pall on you yet?"

"I don't think it would ever pall on me, if I lived here for a century. But then I've got my work, you see."

"And I've got you, my dear. When you and Sark begin to pall I'll promise to let you know. It's heavenly."

"Oh, I don't claim all that, you know. Don't expect too much—"

"Will Charles be involved at all, do you think, Jock?"

"I don't think so. They had not much to do with one another in business matters."

"I'm glad of that. Do you know"—with an introspective look in her eyes—"I've an idea—"

"Hennie Penny?"

Margaret nodded.

"That would be capital. She'd make him an excellent wife."

"I'm sure she would. She's just what he needs. She's as good as gold, and she has more genuine common-sense than anyone I know."

"Thousand thanks!"

"Oh, we're exceptions to all rules. But I do hope something—I mean everything—may come of it. And we would all have reason to bless this blessed little island all our days."

"Some of us will, anyway. It certainly shall not go unblest."

IV

On the Tuesday afternoon Graeme received a brief telegram from Charles Pixley—"Crossing tonight." And Wednesday morning found them all on the sea-wall awaiting the arrival of the steamer from Guernsey.

"There he is—in the front corner of the upper deck—keen to get here as soon as possible, I should say. I know just how he feels," said Graeme, with a laugh. "Looks a bit different from what he did the first time he came."

"That's Mrs. Pixley on the side seat," said Margaret, and they waved their welcomes.

There were two ladies on the side seat, and both stood up and waved vigorously in reply.

"Why—who—?" began Margaret. And then—excitedly, "Jock—I believe it's Lady Elspeth. I'm certain it is. It is. It is."

"Just like her! Hurrah for the Gordons!" and he sent them welcomes which a world full of Pixleys alone could not have excited in him.

"Now this is delightful," he said, as he sprang on board and rushed at Lady Elspeth.

"All right, my boy! Don't shake my hand right off, if you can help it. Here, you may give me a kiss, though it's contrary to the usages of my country. We'll pretend I'm your mother again. Now say how do you do to Mrs. Pixley. How's Margaret? I've got crows to pick with you young people—"

"Make it seven, or it's unlucky," laughed Graeme.

"Eh? What?"

"Tell you later. We're great believers in crows here. Mrs. Pixley, I am very glad indeed to see you here. Charles, old man, you've done splendidly."

Charles wrung his hand in silence. His face was sober, with a latent glow of expectation in it. When he had seen to the luggage he joined the group on the quay, and it was Miss Penny who was the first to see him coming.

"Welcome back to Sark!" she said cheerfully.

"I'm uncommonly glad to be here. Everybody all right? How's Mrs. Carre?"

"Everybody's first-rate, especially Meg and Jock. Their spirits are enough to inflate the island."

"It's good to be young," and the sober mask lifted slightly and let the inner light shine through.

V

"Go to an hotel?" said Margaret indignantly, in reply to a suggestion from Lady Elspeth. "Indeed you'll do nothing of the kind,"—and, as the old lady hesitated still,—"If you do I'll never speak to you again as long as I live."

"Oh well, I couldn't stand that—"

"Of course you couldn't. Neither could I. An hotel indeed!"—with withering scorn—"And we with four empty bedrooms crying aloud at night because two of their fellows are occupied and they are left out in the cold! An hotel! I'd just like to see you!"

"My guidness! Is she often like this, Jock?"

"Oh, always! I thought you knew her. Why couldn't you warn me in time?—No!" as Lady Elspeth attempted to speak—"It's too late now. We're bound for life. There's no cutting the bond. The Vicar told us so."

"You're both clean daft together," said the old lady, with dancing eyes. "Well, I'll stop in one of your crying bedrooms—on conditions. We'll talk about that later on. Where's the rest of the island, and how do you get to it?"

"Old ladies and luggage ride. We youngsters walk. There's Charles waiting for you at the carriage. There you are! Au revoir!"

As the young people breasted the steep, Pixley—forgetting entirely his vow never to do it on foot again—unfolded to them Lady Elspeth's idea, which simply was, that if the Red House could hold them all,—of which she had her doubts, in spite of his assertions,—they should all share expenses and such household duties as so large a party would involve.

"You see—if you don't mind it, Mrs. Graeme,"—with an apologetic look at Margaret,—"it will give the two old ladies something to do and will leave us young folks freer to get about."

"It's a capital arrangement if the old ladies don't mind. Mrs. Carre can get in another girl. It will keep them all busy seeing that we have enough to eat. But they'll soon get used to looking forward two or three days and ordering Friday's dinner on Tuesday."

"How long can you stop, old man?" asked Graeme.

"A fortnight—all being well," and there was a touch of soberness in it as he said that. "There's really nothing doing, and Ormerod's a good fellow and insisted on it."

"We can do heaps in a fortnight," said Miss Penny jubilantly. "However did you manage to catch Lady Elspeth?"

"She's a grand old lady. I found her with my mother when I got there. She'd been with her ever since—since the trouble. And when I proposed bringing my mother she said at once that she was coming too. She had crows to pick with you two, and so on. I expect she thought my mother would feel things less if she was with her."

"She's an old dear," said Margaret. "They shall both have the very best time we can give them."

"I shall take them conger-eeling," said Graeme,—"and to Venus's Bath"

"And down the Boutiques and the Gouliots"—suggested Margaret.

"And ormering in Grande Greve," laughed Miss Penny, who had spent a day there on that alluring pursuit and had come home bruised and wet and dirty.

"Oh, there's lots of fun in store for them," said Graeme, laughing like a schoolboy out for a holiday. "And, as Hennie Penny says, we can do heaps in a fortnight."

VI

Having made up their minds that there was no earthly reason why Charles Pixley and Hennie Penny should not be as happy as they were themselves, Margaret and Graeme saw to it that nothing should be awanting in the way of opportunity.

Miss Penny's natural goodness of heart impelled her to the most delicate consideration towards Mrs. Pixley. Hennie Penny, you see, had come bravely through dire troubles of her own, and tribulation softens the heart as it does the ormer. She anticipated the nervous old lady's every want, soothed her bruised susceptibilities in a thousand hidden ways, tended her as lovingly as an only daughter might have done,—and all out of the sheer necessity of her heart, and with never a thought of reward other than the satisfaction of her own desire for the happiness of all about her.

Not that the others were one whit less considerate, but, in the natural course of things, Miss Penny's heart and time were, perhaps, a little more at liberty for outside service, and in Mrs. Pixley the opportunity met her half-way.

It is safe to say that the old lady had never in her life been so much made of. Margaret had always been gentle and sweet with her; but the cold white light of Mr. Pixley's unco' guidness had always cast a shadow upon the household, and Margaret had got from under it whenever the chance offered.

"You are very good to me, my dear," Charles heard his mother say to Hennie Penny, one day when they two were alone together and did not know anyone was near. "If I had ever had a daughter I would have liked her to be like you. How did you learn to be so thoughtful of other people?"

"I think it must have been through having come through lots of troubles of my own," said Hennie Penny simply.

"Troubles abound," said the tremulous old lady. "You have drawn the sting of yours and kept only the honey," which saying astonished Charles greatly. He had no idea his mother could say things like that. She had had time to think plenty of them, indeed, but there had never been room for more than one shining light in the household and that had cast strong shadows.

Charles had gone quietly away smiling to himself, and had been in cheerful spirits for the rest of the day.

The first night, when the ladies had gone chattering upstairs to make sure that all the arrangements were in order, Graeme and Pixley sat out on the verandah smoking a final pipe.

The ladies' voices floated through the open windows as they passed from room to room, and Graeme laughed softly. "What's up?" asked Pixley, gazing at him soberly.

"I was thinking of the changes here since the first night I slept in this house all by myself, and heard ghosts creeping about and all kinds of noises."

"Much jollier to hear them," said Charles, as Miss Penny's and Margaret's laughter came floating down the softness of the night.

"Ay, indeed! Very much jollier," and they smoked and listened.

No word had so far passed between them as to the troubles that lay behind. There had, indeed, been no opportunity until now, and Graeme had no mind to broach the matter.

But Pixley had only been waiting till they could discuss things alone, and the time had come.

"It will take them months to get to the bottom of things over there," he said quietly. "I saw the accountants, and they say everything's in a dreadful mess. He must have been involved for years. It makes me absolutely sick to think of it all, Graeme, and him—"

"I'm sure it must, old chap. Why think of it? It's done, and it can't be undone, and everyone knows you had nothing to do with it."

"I know. Everyone is very kind, but I can't get rid of it. It's with me all the time like a dirty shadow."

"We'll chase it away. No place like Sark for getting rid of bogeys and worries."

"How things will come out it's impossible to say. I made special enquiries into Margaret's affairs, and it's quite certain he's tampered with her money, but they could not say yet to what extent. On the other hand, certain of her securities are intact, so everything is not gone. But what I wanted to say was this. I am determined that Margaret shall not suffer, whatever may have happened. Any deficiency I shall make good myself."

"My dear fellow, she would never hear of it."

"That's why I'm talking to you."

"Well, I won't hear of it either. As I told you before, it was a trouble to me when I heard she had any money. Whatever she had I settled on herself, and we can get on very well without it."

"All the same I'm not going to have her lose anything through my—through him. Neither you nor she can stop me doing what I like with my own money."

"We can refuse to touch it."

"That would be nonsense."

"Not half as bad as you crippling yourself for life to make good what you'd never made away with."

"It wouldn't do that," said Charles quietly. "Ormerod's a long-headed fellow, and we made some pretty good hits before the bottom dropped out of things. You must let me have my own way in this matter, Graeme, if it's only for my own peace of mind. I'm going to ask Miss Penny to be my wife. Do you think—"

"My dear fellow," said Graeme, jumping up and shaking him heartily by the hand, "that's the best bit of news I've heard since Meg said 'I will' in the church there. She's an absolutely splendid girl, is Hennie. Except Meg herself, I don't know any girl I admire so much. She's as good and sweet as they make 'em, and for sound common-sense she's a perfect gold mine."

"And you don't think—?"

"I've never heard a hint of anyone else. Like me to ask Meg? She'd be sure to know. Girls talk of these things, you know."

"I don't know. Would it be quite—"

"Everything's fair in love and war,—proverbial, my boy. But I'm pretty sure you've a clear field, and I congratulate you both with all my heart. Come to think of it, she's been as dull as a ditch since you went away"

"Really?"

"Fact! I was trying the other night to prove to her that she'd got influenza coming on, or hay-fever, or something of the kind. She's as different as chalk from cheese since eleven o'clock to-day. It's you, I'll bet you a sovereign."

Charles did not respond to the offer. He sat smoking quietly and let his thoughts run along brighter paths than they had done for days.

VII

At breakfast next morning Graeme soberly suggested to Lady Elspeth that she should go conger-eeling with him that day. And the shrewd brown eyes looked into his, and twinkled in response to the deep blue and the brown ones opposite, and she said, "I mind I was just a wee bit feather-headed myself for a while after I was married. I caught congers before you were short-coated, my laddie, but I'm not going catching them now."

"They are a bit rampageous when they're grown up," he admitted. "We got one the other day about as thick round as one's leg, and it barked like a dog and tried to bite."

"And does he make you go congering, my dear?" she asked Margaret.

"Make?" scoffed Graeme. "Make, forsooth? How little you know! I'd like to see the man who could make that young person do anything but just what she wishes. Why, she twists us all round her little finger and——"

"Ay, ay! Well, discipline is good for the young, and you're just nothing but a laddie in some things."

"I'm going to keep so all my life. So's Meg! Well, suppose we say ormering then, if congering's too lively. Hennie Penny's an awful dab at ormering. If you'd seen her the other night when she came home! A tangle of vraic was an old lady's best cap in comparison—"

"And how many did I get, and how many did you get?" retorted Miss Penny.

"I got six and you got seven—"

"Seventeen, and you stole four of your six from Meg."

"Oh well, I found the mushrooms, coming home, and they were worth a pailful of ormers."

"You didn't beat them long enough. Ormers take a lot of beating," she explained to Lady Elspeth.

"Thumping, she means. My mushrooms beat them hollow,—tender and delicate and fragrant"—and he sniffed appreciatively as though he could scent them still.—"Your ormers were like shoe-soles."

"And as to the mushrooms," continued Hennie Penny, "you'd never have found them if I hadn't tumbled into them, and then you thought they were toadstools."

"Oh well!—Who can't take a hook out of a whiting's mouth? Who was it screamed when the lobster looked at her?"

"It nearly took a piece out of me."

"Who nearly upset the boat when a baby devilfish came up in the pot? And it wasn't above that size!"

"I draw the line at devil-fish. They're no' canny."

"Do they generally go on like this?" asked Lady Elspeth of Margaret.

"All the time," said Margaret, with a matronly air. "They're just a couple of children. I keep them out of mischief as well as I can, but it's hard work at times."

"She's just every bit as bad, you know, when we're alone," said Miss Penny. "But she's got her company manners on just now. You should see her when she's bathing."

"Ah—yes! You should see her when she's bathing," said Graeme, with a smack of the lips. "All the little waves and crabs and lobsters keep bobbing up to have another look at her. In Venus's Bath the other day—"

"Now, children, stop your fooling. Where shall we go to-day?" laughed Margaret, and Lady Elspeth could hardly take her eyes off her, so winsomely, so radiantly happy was she.

"We old folks will stay at home and talk to Mrs. Carre," said Lady Elspeth. "You young ones can go off and do what you like."

"Oh no, you don't," said Graeme. "You didn't come here to loaf in a verandah. When you come to Sark you've got to enjoy yourselves, whether you want to or not. Suppose we take lunch along to the Eperquerie, and the elders can bask and snooze, and we'll bathe three times off that black ledge under Les Fontaines. And if the Seigneur's out fishing perhaps he'll take some of us with him, those who don't scream when the poor fish gets a hook in its throat. And you'll see Margaret out on the loose. She always goes it when she's swimming."

"I hope you won't venture too far out, Charles," said Mrs. Pixley, with visions of his limp body being carried home.

"Miss Penny and I are sensible people when we're bathing," said Charles. "We don't lose our heads—"

"Nor any of the rest of you,—nor touch of the stones," laughed Graeme.

"That's so," said Charles. "We like to know what's below us and that it's not too far away."

"It's very wise," said Mrs. Pixley plaintively. "One hears of such dreadful accidents. I'm very glad you're so sensible, my dear," to Miss Penny.

"Oh, I'm dreadfully sensible at times, especially when I'm bathing. But that's because I can only swim with one foot at the bottom."

"Any beach about there?" enquired Charles forethoughtfully.

"Nice little bit just round the corner, with a cave and all,—capital place for children. Paddle by the hour without going in above your ankles."

And so they wandered slowly up the scented lanes past the Seigneurie, laden with the usual paraphernalia of a bathing-lunch, and came out on the Eperquerie.

They established the old ladies in a gorsy nook, built a fireplace of loose stones, and collected fuel, and laid the fire ready for the match, which Lady Elspeth was to apply whenever they waved to her.

"If She isn't fast asleep," said Graeme.

Then they pointed out all the things that lay about, so that they might take an intelligent interest in their surroundings,—Guernsey, and Herm, and Jethou, and Alderney, and the Casquets, and the coast of France, and the Seigneur in his boat, and then they trooped off like a party of school-children.

And presently the old ladies saw them scrambling down the black, scarped sides of the headland opposite, and then they disappeared behind rocks and into crannies. Then a pink meteor flashed from the black ledge, followed in an instant by a dark-blue one, and both went breasting out to sea. And in front of the cave two less venturesome figures beguiled the onlookers and themselves into the belief that they were swimming, though they never went out of their depth and sounded anxiously for it at every second stroke.

And up above, the larks trilled joyously, and the air was soft and sweet as the air of heaven; and down below, the water was bluer than the sky and clear as crystal, so that they could see the great white rocks which lay away down in the depths, and they looked like sea-monsters crawling after their prey. And the shouts of the swimmers came mellowly up to them, and they could see their little limbs jerking like the limbs of frogs.

"It is good to be here," said Lady Elspeth enjoyably.

"It is very very good to be here. I am very glad we came," said Mrs. Pixley, with a sigh that was not all sadness.

VIII

Many such days of sheer delight they had, and kept the dark cloud resolutely below their horizon. They accommodated their activities to the limited powers of the elders, and took them wherever it was reasonably possible for them to go. They chartered a boat for the day, and took them and all the luncheon-things round from Creux Harbour to Grande Greve, subjecting Charles to long-unaccustomed labours at the oar. In the same way they introduced them to Dixcart Bay, and Derrible, and Greve de la Ville; and, choosing a fit day, they circumnavigated the island again in three boat-loads, landing for lunch on an even keel on Breniere, and penetrating into every accessible cave they came to,—Mrs. Pixley enjoying the wonders in fear and trembling, and breathing freely only when they were safely out in the open once more. And Graeme and Margaret watched the approximating of Hennie Penny and Charles with infinite delight. It needed only a full understanding between these two to complete their own great happiness.

But the dark cloud was there, though they might refuse to look at it, and clouds below the horizon have a way of rising, especially dark ones.

The post-office in Sark is a cottage, or the part of a cottage, turned from private to public use. In former times the service was of a very perfunctory character, Providence largely taking the place of post-master while that official attended first to his fishing and then to his duties, and any who had good and valid reason to expect a letter came down to the mail-bag where it lay on the beach and went through it for themselves.

The advent of visitors accustomed to more exact and business-like methods, however, has done away with this Arcadian simplicity, and now each day when the boat is in, all who prefer not to wait for the tardy delivery at their own houses, collect gradually round the official cottage, and in due course, and after the exercise of virtues, receive their mail across the counter. And some tear their letters open at once, regardless of spectators, and devour them on the spot, but the wiser carry them home for private consumption. For one never knows for certain what of heartbreak and disaster the most innocent-looking envelope may contain.

Graeme and Margaret and Miss Penny, however, being in retreat, and having cut the painter with the outside world, had not cultivated the post-office until Charles and Lady Elspeth arrived. But, as Charles had to keep more or less in touch with Throgmorton Street, they had now got into the habit of calling with him for his letters, except when the doing so interfered with the programme for the day. And many an amusing, and sometimes touching, insight did they get there into human nature. Graeme said it was worth while the trouble of going, just to sit in the hedge opposite and watch people's faces, especially the faces of those who tore open their letters and those who got none.

They were sitting so in the hedge one morning, quietly watching and commenting silently, and by looks only, on the vagaries of the letter-scramblers, and Charles had pushed into the crowded little room to antedate the delivery by a few minutes if possible.

As he came out, with his letters in his hand, they all saw at a glance that something had happened. His face, which had been gradually relaxing to its old look of jovial good-fellowship and satisfaction with the world, was tight and hard, and yet they saw that he had not opened a letter. He turned up the road with a mere jerk of the head, and they followed wondering, and all, as it came out afterwards, with the same dim idea as to the possible cause of his upsetting.

He handed Margaret a couple of letters for Lady Elspeth, and made an attempt at conversation as they went along, but the cloud they had been keeping out of sight was visible now to all of them. Among the unopened letters in his hand was one which disturbed him even before he knew what was in it, and they could only wait, with troubled minds, for developments.

Charles went straight to his room, as he usually did when business matters claimed his attention, and from the look on his face Graeme judged that the scramble, fixed for that day on account of a specially low tide, round the Autelets, whose rock-pools and phosphorescent seaweeds and beds of flourishing anemones were a perpetual delight, would be off for the time being at all events.

But Pixley came down presently and intimated that he was ready, and they trooped away, leaving the elders at home for a day's rest, since rock-scrambling was outside their limits.

Their progress, however, was not the usual light-hearted saunter enlivened by merry jokes and laughter. The lanes were fragrant as ever, the air was full of larks and sunshine, but the cloud had risen and overshadowed them, and Graeme guessed why Charles had come. There was something he wanted to discuss with them alone, out of the hearing of his mother and Lady Elspeth.

He was not surprised—when they had scrambled down into Port du Moulin, and had passed through the arch, and were sitting on the rocks above the first of the sea-gardens,—when Charles said, "There's something I want to consult you about, and I couldn't do it at the house, as I want it kept to ourselves. I got this, this morning. Will you read it?" and he handed Graeme a letter. Graeme opened it and read it out.

"99A HIGH STREET, ALDERNEY.

"MY DEAR CHARLES,—I will not at the moment attempt any explanation of the calamity which has befallen our house. If you knew all, you would not blame me as I fear you must be doing. Let me say, however, that I have every reason to hope that in course of time I may be able to redeem the position by making good all deficiencies and so clearing our name of reproach. To do so, I must get away—to Spain in the first instance, and for that I need your assistance. The end came unexpectedly and took me unawares, and I am almost penniless here. In asking your help, I do so the more confidently as, in the path I have indicated, lies the only hope of redemption. In assisting me you will not only be doing what a prosperous son might reasonably be expected to do for his father in his day of misfortune, but you will be acting for the general weal in putting me into a position to make good what I have all unwittingly become responsible for, and to that sacred end the remainder of my life shall be most solemnly dedicated.

"I came here from Cherbourg, and am for the moment safe from oversight. As soon as you place me in position to do so, I shall get away and begin my new life-work, which I am earnestly desirous of doing at the earliest possible moment.

"Address me as above—Revd. J. Peace.

"Your affectionate FATHER."

Graeme kept the humorous wrinkles about his eyes and mouth in order with difficulty as he read this very characteristic effusion, but Margaret was the only one who saw it. Charles had kept his eyes intently on the pool below, and Miss Penny had been regarding him sympathetically.

"What do you make of it?" said Charles. "It makes me sick."

"He evidently needs your help," said Miss Penny.

"Yes, but have I the right to give it him? That's the question."

"He says——" began Graeme.

"Oh, he says!" growled Charles. "Trouble is, he's been saying for the last twenty years, and it has all been a lie. This is probably all a lie too. Not all"—he added grimly. "As I read it, he has got funds stowed away somewhere and he's anxious to get to them."

"So that he may make restitution," urged Miss Penny.

"Yes, that's what he says," said Charles, in a tone that showed no slightest tincture of conviction. "What would you do," he asked, looking up at Graeme, "if you were in my place?"

Graeme filled his pipe thoughtfully.

"Let us look at it quietly all round," he said, and lit up and puffed away contemplatively.

"From what he says,"—checking off his points on his fingers,—"if you don't assist him, he may be taken, and the—the unpleasantness of the situation be thereby increased.... I do not see that his punishment would help anyone—except maybe as a deterrent, and that is problematical.... I gather from this, as you do, that he has funds awaiting him somewhere.... You have no great faith in his promises—"

"None," growled Charles.

"And I presume, as a business man, you would count a bird in the hand worth several in the bush—in other words, you would sooner have what he has stowed away—somewhere, than what he hopes to make some time—"

"Sight sooner!"

"Then, I should say, offer him such assistance as he needs to get away, and, if you can see your way to it, a bit to live on afterwards, on condition of his placing in your hands everything he has got stowed away, so that you can pass it on to the receiver."

Charles shook his head. "I couldn't trust him."

"Then there's only one thing to do if he agrees, and that is to go with him and bring the property back with you."

Charles groaned. "It may mean the Argentine. Spain's no place for investments these days."

"It's rough on you, old man, but it's the best I can think of," said Graeme.

"And supposing he tells me to go hang?"

"Then," said Graeme, with a shrug, "I don't see that you can help him. I have no personal feeling against him whatever, but I cannot see how you can help him except on some such lines as I've indicated. How does it strike you, Meg?"

But Margaret shook her head. "I feel very much as you do. If he is caught and punished it will only add to Mrs. Pixley's and Charles's trouble, and benefit nobody. But he is very obstinate. He has evidently planned out his future. I doubt if he'll turn from it."

"And you, Hennie?" asked Graeme.

"I think you should help him if you possibly can. It's horrible to think of him hiding there and in fear of being caught—"

"Helping him in any case is against the law—"

"Blood is thicker than water," said Hennie Penny earnestly.

"—But if some present benefit was to come to his creditors I should consider it right to do it, not otherwise."

"Suppose you go across, and see him, and talk it over with him, Mr. Pixley?" said Hennie Penny.

"I suppose that's the only thing to be done," groaned Charles. "How do you get there?"

"The Courier would call here by arrangement—up at the Eperquerie," said Graeme. "She can't come in, of course. It means lying out in a small boat and waiting for her. What do you say to us all going? In fact, unless we do, how are we going to explain Charles's going to Mrs. Pixley?"

Charles nodded.

"You could go and see him and we could talk it over again afterwards. I'm inclined to think that he won't accept, you know."

"I don't believe he will, and it'll be a bit hard to refuse him any help, if he really is on his beam ends."

"He wouldn't have written to you if he could have done without, you may count upon that."

"Is he as safe there as he seems to think?" asked Charles.

"Yes, I think so. Safer probably than in Cherbourg. It's an out-of-the-way place, from all accounts."

Discuss it as they would, they could not get beyond Graeme's proposal, and so at last they went back home, decided on the visit to Alderney on the morrow, but all feeling doubtful, and some of them distinctly nervous, as to the outcome of it.

IX

The little party that lay in wait for the Alderney steamer in old Jack Guille's boat off the Eperquerie, next morning, was eminently lacking in the vivacity that usually distinguishes such parties when the sea is smooth and the sky is blue. In fact, when they got on board, the Captain decided in his own mind that they must all have quarrelled before starting. There was no sign of anything of the kind about them now, it is true, but that might just be their good manners. For English people are not like the Sark and Guernsey folk, who, when they do quarrel, let all the world know about it.

These four had apparently little to say to one another and less to anyone else. If they had been going to a funeral they could hardly have been more reserved.

And to something very like a funeral they were going, with the added anxiety of very grave doubts as to the result of their visit.

They had had no difficulty in persuading the elder ladies that Alderney was not for them. The steep path down to the Eperquerie landing, and the tumbling about in a small boat until the steamer came, did not greatly appeal to them. Moreover, Lady Elspeth's clear eyes had noticed the signs of their clouding, in spite of their efforts after naturalness, for to experienced eyes there is nothing so unnatural as the attempt to be natural. If Mrs. Pixley noticed nothing it was probably because her faculties had not yet fully recovered from the shock to which they had been subjected. If she noticed she said nothing, having no desire, perhaps, to add to the weight of her already heavy burden.

"Now, my boy, what is it?" Lady Elspeth asked, when she had persuaded Graeme to take her for a stroll in the evening, under plea of cramp through overmuch sitting.

"Jeremiah Pixley is in Alderney and has written to Charles begging his help to get on his way."

"Ah! And what are you going to do about it?".

Graeme outlined their ideas on the matter.

"He's an old rascal," said Lady Elspeth softly. "I doubt very much if you'll get anything out of him."

"Can you suggest any better way of dealing with the matter?"

"I don't know that I can at the moment, but I doubt if you'll get any satisfaction out of him. He'll stick to all he can, and his promise of restitution is all bunkum, I should fear."

"And would you help him to get away in any case?"

"Personally, I think a course of penal servitude would be of the greatest service to him. But, for Charles's sake and his mother's, the sooner the whole matter is buried the better, and so I should be sorry to hear of him being taken. It would only revive the scandal."

"That's just what we all feel;" and he saw that the problem of Jeremiah Pixley was too much even for Lady Elspeth.

And so the party of four on the Courier lacked vivacity, and found no enjoyment in the lonely austerity of the Casquets or Ortach; and the frowning southern cliffs of Alderney itself, as the steamer raced up the Swinge to Braye Harbour, seemed to them but a poor copy of their own little isle of Sark, lacking its gem-like qualities. But then their minds were intent upon the business ahead and their outlook was darkened.

X

"Would you like me to come up with you, Charles?" Graeme asked, as the steamer rounded the breakwater.

"Yes, I'd like it," said Charles gloomily. "But I think I'd better go alone. I don't believe anything's going to come of it."

"I'm afraid not—as far as we're concerned. You'll just have to keep a stiff upper lip and stick to what you believe the right thing to do." To which Charles replied only with a grim nod, and they went ashore.

"We'll walk up to the town with you," said Graeme, when they got outside the harbour precincts. "When you've got as far as you can with him, come down to the shore due West. You'll find us by that old fort we saw from the boat;" and presently they branched off towards the sea, while Charles went doggedly on into St. Anne on as miserable an errand as ever son had.

He tramped on along the hot white road, till he found himself in the sleepy little town, where the grass grew between the granite sets in the roadways and a dreamy listlessness pervaded all things. He sought out No. 99A High Street and knocked on the door.

It was opened by an elderly woman who seemed surprised at sight of a visitor.

"Mr. Peace?" asked Charles, feeling thereby particeps criminis.

"He's inside. Will you come in?"

She opened a door off the passage, said, "A gentleman to see you;" and Charles went in and closed the door behind him.

His father had started up from a couch where he had been lying. There was a startled look in his eyes and his face was pale and worn, but a touch of colour came back into his cheeks when he saw who his visitor was.

He had shaved off his bit of side whisker. His face was grayer and thinner and his body somewhat shrunken, even in these few days. He wore a white tie, and his coat and waistcoat were of clerical cut. On the table was a pair of gold spectacles and on the sideboard a soft billycock hat. He looked the not-too-well-off country parson to the life. The only outward and visible sign of the old Jeremiah was the heavy gold pince-nez which lay between the top buttons of his waistcoat, which he hauled out and fingered as of old the moment he began to speak.

"Ah, Charles! This is good of you. I hardly expected a personal visit. I was beginning to fear you had not got my letter, or that you had decided not to answer it."

"It followed me to Sark."

"Ah! you are back in Sark?"

"I thought it well to take my mother there, to be out of things for a time."

"Quite so, quite so! That was very thoughtful of you. This is a terrible calamity that has befallen us. But, as I said in my letter, I have every hope of being able to redeem matters if I can only get to where that is possible."

"Where's that?"

"Well, in the first place to Spain—"

"And afterwards?"

Mr. Pixley hesitated. "Perhaps—for your own sake—it would be as well you should not know—for the present, at all events. You may be asked questions. If you don't know, you can truthfully say so."

"I gather that you have funds put away somewhere."

"If I can get to where I want to go, I can at all events make a fresh start. And I am prepared to devote the rest of my life to the one object I have named.... The last few years have been very wearying. I have had trouble with my heart at times;" and he put his hand to his side to emphasise it. "But if I can get quietly away I shall soon pull round and be ready for work again, now that the strain is over."

"You know you're asking me to do what I've no right to do?" said Charles gloomily.

"I know, my boy, and it is very bitter for me to have to ask it. But I can't get away without your help, and the alternative is not pleasant to think of—for either of us.... I do not ask more than I would willingly have done for you if the positions were reversed.... On the whole, I do not think I have been a bad father to you. Circumstances, indeed, have been too strong for me at the end, but—"

"I am willing to do what you want—and more, on one condition."

"What is that? Anything in reason—"

"I will provide you with funds to get away, and I will send you three hundred pounds each year—"

"Good lad!"

"On condition that you hand over to me all the property you've got stowed away—"

"Damn!"

"So that I may hand it over to your creditors."

"Why not write at once to Scotland Yard and tell them where I am? But, after all, I'm not sure that even your world would applaud so filial an act as that."

"I'm prepared to make sacrifices myself to help right some of this wrong—"

"I had to make many for you, my boy, before you were old enough to understand it—before my own position was assured. Ay, and since too. I would have flung it all up years ago but for you. I wanted you to be set firmly on your feet before the crash came. It has been killing work. I'm glad it's over—whatever the end may be. If you can't see your way to help me, the end is obvious and close at hand. I have, I think, something under two pounds in my pocket. If I'd waited to get more I should not be here. The end came unexpectedly. Old Coxley called for some securities which I had—which I couldn't give him at the moment, and I had to go at once or not at all."

Charles stood up. He would have liked to tell him all he felt about the matter. How the tampering with securities hit him more hardly than almost anything could have done, since straight dealing in such matters is the very first of Stock Exchange tenets. How, if he had come to him, he would have strained himself to the utmost to set things right.

But, facile talker as he was on matters that were of no account, he found himself strangely tongue-tied here.

"Well?" he asked. "Will you let me help you?"

"As you will, my boy ... If you do, it offers me a chance—my only chance. If you don't——" he shrugged his heavy shoulders meaningly.

"Do what I ask," urged Charles. "It is the only possible amends you can make."

Mr. Pixley shook his head. "It is out of the question. I could do nothing with three hundred a year——"