most innocent-looking
envelope may contain.

Graeme and Margaret and Miss Penny, however, being in retreat, and
having cut the painter with the outside world, had not cultivated the
post-office until Charles and Lady Elspeth arrived. But, as Charles
had to keep more or less in touch with Throgmorton Street, they had
now got into the habit of calling with him for his letters, except
when the doing so interfered with the programme for the day. And many
an amusing, and sometimes touching, insight did they get there into
human nature. Graeme said it was worth while the trouble of going,
just to sit in the hedge opposite and watch people's faces, especially
the faces of those who tore open their letters and those who got none.

They were sitting so in the hedge one morning, quietly watching and
commenting silently, and by looks only, on the vagaries of the
letter-scramblers, and Charles had pushed into the crowded little room
to antedate the delivery by a few minutes if possible.

As he came out, with his letters in his hand, they all saw at a glance
that something had happened. His face, which had been gradually
relaxing to its old look of jovial good-fellowship and satisfaction
with the world, was tight and hard, and yet they saw that he had not
opened a letter. He turned up the road with a mere jerk of the head,
and they followed wondering, and all, as it came out afterwards, with
the same dim idea as to the possible cause of his upsetting.

He handed Margaret a couple of letters for Lady Elspeth, and made an
attempt at conversation as they went along, but the cloud they had
been keeping out of sight was visible now to all of them. Among the
unopened letters in his hand was one which disturbed him even before
he knew what was in it, and they could only wait, with troubled minds,
for developments.

Charles went straight to his room, as he usually did when business
matters claimed his attention, and from the look on his face Graeme
judged that the scramble, fixed for that day on account of a specially
low tide, round the Autelets, whose rock-pools and phosphorescent
seaweeds and beds of flourishing anemones were a perpetual delight,
would be off for the time being at all events.

But Pixley came down presently and intimated that he was ready, and
they trooped away, leaving the elders at home for a day's rest, since
rock-scrambling was outside their limits.

Their progress, however, was not the usual light-hearted sa