from a bush across the patch of garden; and the eyes of
her visitors, attracted by the sound, rested on an object which Mrs.
Treacher, by interposition of her shoulders, had been doing her best to
hide--a scarecrow standing unashamed in the midst of the garrison
potato patch--a scarecrow in a flaunting waistcoat of scarlet, green,
and yellow!

"My antimacassar!" gasped Miss Gabriel.

"The Lord Pro--" Mr. Pope checked the exclamation midway. "You will
excuse me, ma'am. I was referring to the lower part of the figure."

"Was ever such ingratitude?"

"It is worse, ma'am--ten times worse. You may call it sacrilege."

CHAPTER XV

BREFAR CHURCH

"It was all my fault," confessed Vashti.

"I was thinking so," said the Commandant, drily. "It had not occurred
to me that Archelaus and the Treachers were acting on their own
initiative."

Vashti laughed, and her laugh rippled over the waves to meet the sunset
gold. They had taken boat beneath the Keg of Butter Battery, and were
sailing for Saaron with a light breeze on their quarter. Evening and
Sabbath calm held the sky from its pale yellow verges up to the zenith
across which a few stray gulls were homing. From Garland Town, from St.
Ann's, from Brefar ahead of them, came wafted the sound of bells, far
and faint, ringing to church, and the murmuring water in the boat's
wake seemed to take up Vashti's laugh and echo it reproachfully, as she
checked herself with a glance at her companion's face, which also was
reproachful and sternly set, but with a slight twitch at the corners of
the mouth to betray it.

"Forgive me!" she pleaded, but her voice, too, betrayed her.

"You are not penitent in the least."

"As you are only pretending to be angry. Remember that I belong to the
'profession,' and no amateur acting can impose on me."

"You will admit that you have behaved abominably." The Commandant
conceded a smile.

"Oh, abominably!"

"And perhaps you will be good enough to indicate how I am to restore my
credit with--with those people. When I met them coming down the hill
and pulled up to salute, Miss Gabriel froze me with a stare, Mrs. Pope
looked the other way, and her husband could only muster up a furtive
sort of grin. 'Excuse me,' it seemed to say; 'things may right
themselves by and by, but for the present I cannot know you.' The three
between them knocked me all of a heap. Of course I could not guess what
had happened, but I made sure they had seen you