y you?" she asked, bitterly.

"For none," he answered, but without resentment. "And--excuse me--" he
went on, fumbling in his pocket, and producing a sovereign, which he
tendered to her, "but your mention of pay reminds me to return you
this, which Mrs. Treacher has handed to me. It appears--I must
apologize for her--that she received it from you to give to the men who
carried up your box from the steamer; but that, being a little
frightened at the amount, she withheld it, thinking that possibly you
had made a mistake."

Vashti took the coin. Her face was yet flushed a little--as he read it,
with anger.

"It is true," said she pensively, "that I am fifteen years a stranger
here."

His face brightened. "Ah," said he, "if you will make allowance for
that, we may yet put everything right!"

CHAPTER XII

SAARON ISLAND

Saaron Island lies about due north of Brefar, which looks eastward upon
Inniscaw across the narrow gut of Cromwell's Sound. There was a time
(the tale goes) when these three Islands made one. At low-water springs
you may cross afoot between Saaron and Brefar, and from either of them,
with a little more danger, to Inniscaw, picking your way between the
pools and along the sandy flats that curve about the southern end of
the Sound and divide it from the great roadstead. Also there are
legends of stone walls and foundations of houses laid bare as the
waters have sunk after a gale, and by the next tides covered again with
sand.

But of the past history of Saaron next to nothing could be told, even
by Ruth's husband, young Farmer Tregarthen, who rented the Island and
the one habitable house upon it. He could not even have explained how
so bleak a spot as Saaron had come to possess this farmhouse, which was
one of the roomiest on the Islands. He only knew that it had been built
for one of his forefathers, and that this forgotten Tregarthen, or the
Lord Proprietor who had chosen him for tenant, must have held ambitious
views of the amount of farming possible on Saaron. So much might be
guessed from the size and extent of the out-buildings. The "chall" or
byre, for instance, had stalls for no less than twelve cows, whereas
to-day all the Island's hundred-and-twenty acres barely afforded
pasturage for two. Considering this, he was divided between two
opinions; the first, that his ancestors had pastured their cattle upon
Brefar, driving them to and fro across the flats at low water; the
second, that