astray through some stupidity of the post-office. But the second I
dropped into your letter-box myself. Moreover--"

"I never got them,"--with a charming touch of colour.

"Moreover----?" said Miss Penny expectantly, with a dancing light in
her eyes.

"Well," he said, after a pause, "to tell you the whole story, Mr.
Pixley assured me that you had had them and had handed them on to
him."

"Mr. Pixley said that?" and Margaret sat up, with very much more than
a touch of colour in her face now. In fact it was militantly red and
vastly indignant.

"Yes. I--well, I called upon him at his office just to find out
if--well, if you were ill or anything like that, you know. And among
other interesting information he told me that, and cut off my head
with his glasses and threw my remains out into the street;" at which
Margaret smiled through her indignation.

"Mr. Pixley," said Miss Penny emphatically, "is a--a Johnnie Vautrin
on a larger scale. Had he any other interesting items of information
for you, Mr. Graeme?"

"Well--yes, he had. But I can estimate them now at their proper value,
and it can rest there."

"It was Mr. Black's enthusiasm for Sark at that Whitefriars' dinner
that put it into my head when--when we were wondering where to go. I
remember now," said Margaret.

"It was Black's enthusiasm for Sark that put it into _my_ head when
_I_ was wondering where to go," said Graeme.

"There you are, you see," said Miss Penny. "I knew you must have had
some common inspiration."

"I am greatly indebted to Black. He's one of the finest fellows I
know. He's done me more than one good turn, but I shall always count
Sark his chiefest achievement," said Graeme heartily.

XVIII

The wind howled round the house, and whuffled in the chimney, and sent
spurts of sweet-scented smoke to mingle with the fuller flavour of
Graeme's tobacco. The walls were bare plaster, discoloured with age
and careless usage. The chairs were common kitchen chairs, and the
table a plain deal one. But the driftwood burned with flames whose
forked tongues sang silently but eloquently of wanderings under many
skies, of rainbow isles in sunny seas, of vivid golden days and the
black wonders of tropic nights, of storms and calms, and all the
untold mysteries of the pitiless sea.

But to two at least of the party--and perhaps even to three--that bare
room was radiant beyond any they had ever known.

Orange and amber lightening into sunshine, pu