est and crispest
water in the world, water that tingled and sparkled, full charged with
life and energy.

Then shivers and shakes, and hasty play with a towel, and they were
racing back across the heights to breakfast and the passing of another
day, of which the greatest charm had passed already with that plunge
into the life-giving sea.

If you are inclined to think that I enlarge too much on these two
friends of his, let me remind you that a man is known by the company
he keeps, and these two were Graeme's sole companions for many a
day--those first dark days in the sunny little isle, when all human
companionship would have been abhorrent to him.

In their company he found himself again. Their friendship weaned him
by degrees from the jaundiced view of life which Margaret's
dereliction had induced. They drew him, in time, from his brooding
melancholy, and through the upbuilding of the body restored him to a
quieter mind.

Let no man despise the help of a dog, for there are times when the
friendship of a dog is more sufferable, and of more avail, and far
more comforting, than that of any ordinary human being.

PART THE FOURTH

I

It was just two days before the end of Graeme's fourth week in Sark.
His spirits were rising to the requirements of his work, and he was
looking forward with quite novel enjoyment to a steady spell of
writing, when his hostess startled him, as she cleared away his
breakfast, by saying--

"It iss the day after to-morrow you will be going?"

"Eh? What? Going? No, I'm not going, Mrs. Carre. What made you think I
was going? Why, I've only just come."

His landlady put down the dishes on the table again as a concrete
expression of surprise, put her hands on her hips by way of taking
grip of herself, and stared at him.

"You are not going? Noh? But it wass just for the month I thought you
kem."

"Not at all. I may stop two months, three months,--all my life
perhaps. Won't you let me live and die here if I want to?"

"Ach, then! It iss not to die we woult want you. But I thought my man
said it wass just for the month you kem, and--my Good!--I haf let your
roomss for the day after to-morrow," and her face had lost its usual
smile and was full of distress and bewilderment.

"You've let my rooms? Oh, come now!--But now I think of it, I believe
I did say something about a month or so, when I spoke to John Philip.
Well now, what will you do? Put me out into the road? Or can you