ay to Lague, leaving Adam with Michael Sunlocks at Government
House.

And the old man, being now alone with the lad, though his heart
never wavered or rued the price he had paid for him, often turned
yearningly towards thoughts of his daughter Greeba, so that at length
he said, speaking of her as the child he had parted from, "I can live
no longer without my little lass, and will go and fetch her."

Then he wrote to the Duchess at her house in London, and a few days
afterwards he followed his letter.

He had been a week gone when Michael Sunlocks, having now the
Governor's routine work to do, was sent for out of the north of the
island to see to the light on the Point of Ayre, where there was then
no lighthouse, but only a flase stuck out from a pole at the end of a
sandstone jetty, a poor proxy, involving much risk to ships. Two days
he was away, and returning home he slept a night at Douglas, rising
at sunrise to make the last stage of his journey to Castletown. He
was riding Goldie, the Governor's little roan; the season was spring,
and the morning, fresh from its long draught of dew, was sweet and
beautiful. But Michael Sunlocks rode heavily along, for he was
troubled by many misgivings. He was asking himself for the hundredth
time whether it was right of him, and a true man's part, to suffer
himself to stand between Adam Fairbrother and his family. The sad
breach being made, all that he could do to heal it was to take
himself away, whether Adam favored that course or not. And he had
concluded that, painful as the remedy would be, yet he must needs
take it, and that very speedily, when he came up to the gate of
Government House, and turned Goldie down the path to the left that
led to the stables.

He had not gone far when over the lowing of the cattle in the byres,
and the steady munching of the sheep on the other side of the hedge,
and through the smell of the early grass there came to him the
sweetest sounds he had ever heard, and some of the queerest and
craziest. Without knowing what he did, or why he did it, but taking
himself at his first impulse, he drew rein, and Goldie came to a
stand on the mossgrown pathway. Then he knew that two were talking
together a little in front of him, but partly hidden by a turn of the
path and the thick trammon that bordered it. Rising in his stirrups
he could see one of them, and it was his old friend, Chalse A'Killey,
the carrier, a shambling figure in a guernsey and blue