wung in air, helpless as a babe.
But Tregarthen says it can be done, and I am willing to trust him. If
at the top you can rig up some kind of litter for me, and convey me
home without noise ... I have a fancy, and it is also Miss Cara's, that
we keep the main part of this mystery to ourselves. But who is the
helper aloft there?"

"Sir Ommaney Ward."

"Hey?"

"Sir Ommaney Ward."

"The devil! And I sent for him! Forgive me, Commandant----"

"And excuse me, Sir Caesar, but I prefer to believe he is here because
my letter brought him."

The Lord Proprietor held out his hand.

"Will you take it, Commandant? Miss Cara has told me of that letter.
You are a good man, and I have wronged you."

CHAPTER XXIX

CONCLUSION

Three years and a few months have passed. The date is Easter Monday
(Easter falls early this year), and from the Keg of Butter Battery the
Commandant, as he stands looking seaward, hears the school-bell ringing
in the town at the foot of Garrison Hill, though the school has been
closed a week since for the Easter holidays.

He hears it, but for a while pays no attention to it, though it keeps
ding-dinging insistently. His eyes are bent on the sea; yet not in the
direction of Saaron, where, if they sought carefully, they might detect
a trace of smoke coiling up from the fold of the hills which hides Eli
Tregarthen's farm; but westward, towards the main, whence the steamer
will arrive before nightfall. She is not due for hours, yet the
Commandant's gaze searches the horizon.

The Keg of Butter Battery mounts no guns as yet It is no longer the
ruined platform above which Vashti sat on the crumbling wall and poked
at the wild thyme with her sunshade. The Government contractor has
transformed it: the wall has disappeared, and a smooth glacis slopes
from the Commandant's feet over hidden chambers, constructed to house
those quick-firing guns. The chambers are ready: the guns will arrive
within a week. It is not for them, however, that the Commandant scans
the horizon so intently.

Although it is holiday-time, the bells in the town below are ringing to
the school-house; but the school-house is filled with flowers. Two
years ago the Lord Proprietor called his Islanders together, and
explained how he hoped to bring back prosperity to the Islands by means
of daffodil culture. For an experiment, he offered to present a
thousand Dutch bulbs to every cottager who would give them soil and
cultivation,