Carre undertaking that no inconvenience
should thereby be caused to any of those concerned.

He strolled up the garden, with the dogs racing in front, to choose
his bedroom, and came across his host unwillingly busy with hoe and
spade in the potato patch. His whole aspect betokened such undisguised
sufferance that Graeme could not repress a smile.

"Like it?" he asked.

"Noh!"

"Sooner be at the fishing?"

A nod and a brief smile, and Graeme left him to his unwelcome labours,
and passed through the gap in the tall hedge to his new abode.

It was a well-built house, gray granite below and red tiles up above,
with a wide verandah round the lower storey and white balconies to the
upper one; the inside was all polished pitch pine, and the rooms were
large and airy and suitably furnished for summer occupancy. It was
left in Mrs. Carre's charge, and she and the sun and wind kept it
always sweet and clean, and ready for use at an hour's notice.

With the assistance of his two friends, who displayed an active and
intelligent interest in the matter, he chose the room with the largest
balcony, and said to himself that the coming of the ladies was, after
all, a blessing in disguise. He believed he would be even more
comfortable there than he had been at the cottage. He would have been
quite willing to move in at once if that had been possible.

Next morning, however, the permission duly arrived, and in many trips
he gaily carried all his belongings up the garden and installed
himself in the balcony room.

It was a very delightful room, with fine wide outlook--over towards
the church in its dark embowerment of evergreen oaks, which some of
the folk would not pass by night; over the long sweep of the land
towards Little Sark; then, over to the left, a glimpse of the sea and
a dark blue film on the horizon which he knew was Jersey.

This room and the balcony outside should be his workshop, he decided,
and he looked forward, with an eagerness to which he had been stranger
for weeks past, to burying himself in his work and finding in it
solace and new strength.

II

Graeme possessed a lively imagination, else surely he had never taken
to writing. But a lively imagination, sole occupant of a ten-roomed
house in a strange land whose inhabitants believed firmly in ghosts
and spirits and things that walked by night, and that house but a
stone's-throw from the black churchyard where such discomforting
things might naturall