none the less, she is the wife of John;" and with little
more persuasion Mr. Wyeth told me the story.

"It is the story of a sacrifice," he began, "mad or great, as you
please; but, mark you, it achieved its end. As a boy, I witnessed it
from its beginnings. For it was at this very door that Robert Lovyes
rapped when he first landed on Tresco on the night of the seventh of
May twenty-two years ago, and I was here on my holidays at the time. I
had been out that day in my father's lugger to the Poul, which is
the best fishing-ground anywhere near Scilly, and the fog took us, I
remember, at three of the afternoon. So what with that and the wind
failing, it was late when we cast anchor in Grimsey Sound. The night
had fallen in a brown mirk, and so still that the sound of our feet
brushing through the ferns was loud, like the sweep of scythes. We sat
down to supper in this kitchen about nine, my mother, my father, two
men from the boat, and myself, and after supper we gathered about the
fire here and talked. The talk in these parts, however it may begin,
slides insensibly to that one element of which the noise is ever in
our ears; and so in a little here were we chattering of wrecks and
wrecks and wrecks and the bodies of dead men drowned. And then, in the
thick of the talk, came the knock on the door--a light rapping of the
knuckles, such as one hears twenty times a day; but our minds were
so primed with old wives' tales that it fairly shook us all. No one
stirred, and the knocking was repeated.

"Then the latch was lifted, and Robert Lovyes stepped in. His beard
was black then--coal black, like his hair--and his face looked out
from it pale as a ghost and shining wet from the sea. The water
dripped from his clothes and made a puddle about his feet.

"'How often did I knock?' he asked pleasantly. 'Twice, I think. Yes,
twice.'

"Then he sat down on the settle, very deliberately pulled off his
great sea-boots, and emptied the water out of them.

"'What island is this?' he asked.

"'Tresco.'

"'Tresco!' he exclaimed, in a quick, agitated whisper, as though he
dreaded yet expected to hear the name. 'We were wrecked, then, on the
Golden Ball.'

"'Wrecked?' cried my father; but the man went on pursuing his own
thoughts.

"'I swam to an islet.'

"'It would be Norwithel,' said my father.

"'Yes,' said he, 'it would be Norwithel.' And my mother asked
curiously--

"'You know these islands?' For his speech was leisur