e."

"And for mine, begad!" agreed the Lieutenant! "Else I shall have every
man of them grinning behind my back for a month of Sundays. 'Rogers'
smuggling-chase'--I can hear the villains chuckling over it.... But I
say, though"--he turned on Vashti admiringly--"you'll want an escort
across, eh? You don't tell me you're man enough to handle that boat
alone?"

"If you please, sir."

"The Channel's none too easy on a dark night."

Vashti smiled. "My father taught it to me, sir, before I was ten years
old. I could sail it blindfold."

"And you have the nerve?... And yet just now, the dark frightened you,
and you ran for your life!"

"No," said Vashti, demurely, "I just stood still."

"Well, come along! And when you get to the Battery, you'll have to
stand still again, and wait until I report the coast clear. Commandant,
will you give Miss Cara your arm, while I run ahead."

They stepped out together into the night. Vashti neither took the
Commandant's arm nor spoke to him, even after Mr. Rogers had passed
ahead out of earshot. Only when the pair had reached the dark battery,
and were waiting there on the dark platform above the sea, she turned
to him and asked--

"Shall you be busy to-morrow?"

"I am never busy."

"I have left my cloak and the guitar with Archelaus."

"I will bring them to Saaron to-morrow."

She turned away and leaned over the low parapet to the left. Some way
below a footfall sounded, on the track leading to the watch-house---the
footfall of Beesley. A stone, dislodged by his tread, trickled and fell
over the cliff into night.

* * * * *

"Curious!" remarked Mr. Rogers, confidentially, to the Commandant,
twenty minutes later, as they stood and peered into the darkness after
Vashti's boat. "Here I am, stuck on these Islands (so to speak) with a
telescope held to my eye. Of the folk upon 'em I see next to nothing.
Now, I don't know if you took note of it, but that's a remarkable
looking woman; a remarkably handsome woman; and I've spent these years
here without guessing that such a woman existed hereabouts. Eh?" Mr.
Rogers relapsed into mild facetiousness. "If you were a younger man,
Commandant, I could hatch up a pretty story out of to-night's
doings--and if I didn't mind a laugh against myself."

CHAPTER XXII

PIPER'S HOLE

Annet, Linnet, and Matthew Henry sat side by side on the granite roller
by the gate and watched their friend Ja