. I will wish you good-day, Mr.
Pixley."

Mr. Pixley and the pince-nez wafted him towards the door, and the
lumpy cobbles of the courtyard outside seemed to him, for the moment,
absolutely typical of life.

He went back home numbed and sore at heart. It was hard to believe
this of Margaret Brandt.

And yet--he said to himself--it was wholly he who was to blame. He had
deceived himself. He had wished to believe what he had so earnestly
desired should be. Possibly he had closed his eyes to facts and
indications which might have enlightened him if he had been on the
look-out for them. Possibly--well, there!--he had played the fool
unconsciously, and he was not the first. It only remained for him now
to play the man.

He felt sore, and bruised, and run down, and for the moment somewhat
at odds with life. He would get away from it all to some remote
corner, to rest for a time and recover tone, and then to work. For
work, after all, is the mighty healer and tonic, and when it is to
one's taste there are few wounds it cannot salve.

PART THE THIRD

I

Six o'clock next morning found Graeme on the deck of the _Ibex_ as she
threaded her way swiftly among the bristling black rocks that guard
the coast of Guernsey.

Herm and Jethou lay sleeping in the eye of the sun. Beyond them lay a
filmy blue whaleback of an island which he was told was Sark, and it
was to Sark he was bound.

And wherefore Sark, when, within reasonable limits, all the wide world
lay open to him?

Truly, it might not be easy to say. But this I know,--having so far
learned the lesson of life, though missing much else--that at times,
perhaps at all times, when we think our choice of ways our very
own,--when we stand in doubt at the crossroads of life, and then
decide on this path or that, and pride ourselves on the exercise of
our high prerogative as free agents,--the result, when we look back,
bears in upon our hearts the mighty fact that a higher mind than our
own has been quietly at work, shaping our ends and moulding and
rounding our lives. We may doubt it at times. We may take all the
credit to ourselves for dangers passed and tiny victories won, but in
due time the eyes of our understanding are opened--and we know.

Possibly it was the rapt eulogiums of his friend Black--who had spent
the previous summer in Sark, and had ever since been seeking words
strong enough in which to paint its charms--that forced its name to
the front when he