t when old Tom Hamon put
it to him direct, he had to confess that he never had seen old Mother
Vautrin and Marielihou together, nor both at the same time.

"B'en!" said old Tom, as if that ended the matter. "An' I tell you, if
I had a silver bullet I'd soon try what that Marrlyou's made of."

"And why a silver bullet?" asked Graeme.

"'Cause--Lead bullets an't no good 'gainst the likes o' Marrlyou.
Many's the wan I've sent after her, ay, an' through her, and she none
the worse. Guyablle!" and old Tom spat viciously.

"Perhaps you missed her," suggested Graeme, not unreasonably as he
thought.

"Missed her!" with immense scorn. "I tell ee bullets goes clean
through her, in one side an' out t'other, an' she never a bit the
worse. I've foun' 'em myself spatted on rock just where she sat."

"Well, why don't you get a silver bullet and try again?"

"Ah! Teks some getting does silver bullets."

"How much?"

"A shill'n would mek a little wan," and Graeme gave him a shilling to
try his luck, because Marielihou's unsportsmanlike behaviour did not
commend itself to him.

But it took many shillings to obtain anything definite in the way of
results, and Graeme had his own humorous suspicions as to the billets
some of them found, and gently chaffed old Tom on the subject whenever
they met.

"You wait," said Tom, with mysterious nods.

IX

Graeme's sober intention had been to put Margaret Brandt, and the
agonising regrets that clung to every thought of her, strenuously out
of his mind. But that he found more possible in the intention than in
the accomplishment.

The first shock of loss numbs one's mental susceptibilities, of
course, much as a blow on the head affects the nervous system. The
bands are off the wheels, the machinery is out of order, and the
friction seems reduced. It is when the machine tries to work again
that the full effects of the jar are felt.

And so he found it now. As mind and body recovered tone in the whole
vitalising atmosphere of the wondrous little isle,--the air, the sea,
the sense of remoteness, the placid life of the place, the abounding
beauties of cliff and crag and cave,--his heart awoke also to the
aching sense of its loss.

All outward things--all save Johnny Vautrin, and Marielihou, and old
Tom Hamon, and several others--sang abundantly of the peace and
fulness and joy of life, but his heart was still so sore from its
bruising that at times these outward beauties seemed only