rbour on
the other side of the island. He breasted the gale and headed for the
house.

"I'm very much afraid we're stuck for the night," he said, as they
looked up enquiringly on his entrance. "There's not a sign of a boat,
and I'm quite sure no boat could face that sea. Sark looks like an
outcast island--the very end of the world."

"Then we'll make ourselves comfortable here," said Miss Penny. "We
began to fear you'd been blown over the cliffs. Is there plenty of
wood in the house?"

"I'll go and get some more," and he came back with a great armful of
broken driftwood, and went again for as much gorse as he could carry
in a rude wooden fork he found near the stack.

"You must be soaked through and through," said Margaret.

"Bit damp, but your cloak was a great help," and he piled gorse and
chunks of wood on the fire till its roaring almost drowned the noise
of the storm outside.

XVII

"Well, I call this absolutely ripping," said Miss Penny exuberantly,
as they sat by the fire of many-coloured flames, after a slender cup
of tea and as hearty a meal as Graeme would allow them in view of
possible contingencies. "Do please smoke, Mr. Graeme. It just needs a
whiff of tobacco to complete our enjoyment."

"Sark," she added, leaning back with her hands clasped behind her
head, "when no one knows you're there, is just heavenly. No letters,
no telegrams, no intrusion of the commonplace outside world! Those are
distinctly heavenly attributes, you know--"

It was truly extraordinary how, with nothing more than a very general
intention thereto, she played into his hands at times. Here now was a
very simple question he had been wanting to put to Miss Brandt for
days past. For the answer to it might shed light in several
directions. But he had been loth to force matters, and had quietly
waited such opportunity as might arise in a natural way without undue
obtrusion of the doubt that was in his mind.

"'Peace--perfect peace!' as Adam Black used to sigh," he said. "And
by the way"--turning to Margaret--"speaking of letters, I have often
wondered at times if you ever received two that I sent you concerning
Lady Elspeth--just about the time she was called away to Scotland?"

She looked back at him with surprise, and his question was answered
and his doubt solved before ever she opened her lips.

"About Lady Elspeth? No,--I certainly never got them."

"H'm!" he nodded thoughtfully. "The first I feared might have gone