nt Archelaus the Commandant had winced more than
once.

Worst of all, the fatal secret tied his tongue under all the many
slights (as he reckoned them) which the Lord Proprietor put on him. No;
worst of all was the self-reproach he carried about in his own breast.
But none the less the Commandant, as a sensitive man, chafed under the
Lord Proprietor's tyranny, which was the harder to bear for being
slightly contemptuous. He felt that all his old friends pitied him
while they turned to worship the rising sun; while, as for Miss Gabriel
(who had never been his friend), he feared her caustic tongue worse
than the devil.

But to attack him thus through his men! Had Miss Gabriel and the Lord
Proprietor conspired to inflict this indignity?

The Commandant was a sincere Christian: ever willing to believe the
best of his kind, incapable of harbouring malice, or, except in the
brief heat of temper, of imputing it to others. In the short three
hundred yards between the Day Point and Windlass Batteries he repented
his worst thoughts. He acquitted his enemies--if enemies they were--of
conspiracy. The coincidence of the two gifts was fortuitous: they had
been offered without guile, if also without sufficient care for his
feelings. But this kind of thing must not happen again, and obviously
the most tactful way to prevent it was, not to remonstrate with Miss
Gabriel or with the Lord Proprietor, but to provide (somehow) his two
sergeants with a re-fit.

The Commandant had arrived at this conclusion and at the Sand Pit
Battery (five thirty-two pounders) almost simultaneously, when, across
the breastwork, he was aware of Mr. Rogers, Lieutenant R. N., and
Inspecting Commander of the Coast-guard, standing at the head of the
slope just outside the fortifications, and conning the sea through a
telescope.

"Hullo!" said Mr. Rogers--a short man with a jolly smile--lowering his
glass and facing suddenly about at the sound of the Commandant's
footfall. "Hullo! and good evening!"

"Good evening!" responded Major Vigoureux.

"Queer-looking sky out yonder."

"So it is, now you come to mention it." The Commandant, shaken out of
his brown study, slowly concentrated his gaze on the western horizon.

"See that bank of fog? I don't know what to make of it. No wind at all;
the glass steady as a rock; and a heavy swell rolling up from westward.
Take hold of my glass and bring it to bear on the Monk"--this was the
lighthouse guarding the weste