his own good spirits. "It does make a difference," said he aloud,
though the remark was addressed to himself.

"It do," said Archelaus, turning in the doorway.

"I--I beg your pardon?" The Commandant turned about, a trifle confused.

"It may seem a little thing; but it gives a man self-respect, and I'm
glad you noticed 'em." Archelaus looked down at his legs, complacently.
"Always supposin'," he added, "they don't take me for a Frenchman,
owing to the fulness hereabouts."

Yes, certainly, it made a difference--to rise in the morning with a
sense of something waiting to be done. So the Commandant put it to
himself while he shaved, standing at his dressing-table under the
barrack window. The window was set high in the wall: too high to afford
him a view of the Islands, even though he stood on tip-toe. But through
it and above the open pane he caught a glimpse of blue sky and
lilac-coloured cloud, touched with gold by the risen sun. He could
guess the rest. A perfect morning!--clean and crisp, with the sea a
translucent blue, and sunlight glittering on the Island beaches; the
air still, yet bracing, and withal ineffably pure--a morning mysterious
with the sense of autumn, but of autumn rarified by its passage over
the salt strait, deodorised, made pure of marsh fog and the rotting
leaf.

The Commandant hummed to himself in the intervals of his shaving, which
nevertheless he performed meticulously by force of habit. It was his
custom to shave, and very carefully, before taking his bath. For years
he had made a ritual of his morning toilet: so many passes of his razor
across the strop (to be precise, one hundred and fifty, neither more
nor less), so many douches with the sponge, so many petitions
afterwards on his knees. Yes, it is to be feared that his prayers, no
less than his shaving, had become a drill, though one may plead for him
that he always went through it conscientiously. A stroke too few across
the strop--a petition to the Almighty missed--either would have worried
him with a feeling that the day had been begun amiss. He was poor, but
with the never-failing well on Garrison Hill he could come clean as the
richest to his prayers. Even Miss Gabriel had to admit that the poor
man (as she put it) knew how to take care of his person.

"We shall be in good time, Archelaus," said the Commandant, with a side
glance at his watch; "that is, if you'll step down the hill and get the
boat ready."

Archelaus, whose he