ys she is getting too old for the fanning, and must have
help, and so--"

"So you have arranged it all among you, though for all you knew it was a
dead man you were planning for."

"It kept our hearts alive to plan it, and, besides, we knew you were not
dead. I think we would have felt it if you had been."

"A woman's heart is the most wonderful thing in the world and the most
precious. But it may deceive itself. It believes a thing is because it
wishes it to be sometimes, I think, and it won't believe a thing because it
wishes it not to be."

"Well, that is as it should be, and you are talking like one of your
grandfather's books, Phil," she said lightly, not guessing what was in my
mind. For it had seemed to me that I ought to tell her of her brother's
death, lest it should come upon her in a heap outside.

"Your father and brothers now," I asked. "Did you look to see them back?"

"Surely! Until my father and Martin came alone telling us the rest were
gone. It was sore news indeed."

"Unless they saw them lying dead they may still live. You have thought them
dead. But, dear, Helier was with me in the prison in England. He came there
sorely wounded, and I helped to nurse him back to life. We escaped together
and got home together--" Her hands had clasped in her excitement, and the
white glimmer of her face was lifted hopefully to mine, and I hurried on to
crush her hope before it grew of size to die hard.

"We got home together that morning they carried you off. He went to Aunt
Jeanne's and I went home. When Krok burst in with the news about you, I
hurried across to Brecqhou. On the shore of the bay was a boat, and in it
Helier lay dead with a bullet through his head."

"Oh, Phil!" in a voice of anguish, for Helier had been her favourite....
"And who--?"

"Those who took you without doubt."

"Ah, the wretches! I wish--" And I was of the same mind.

"I could do nothing, for he was dead. So I took his boat and followed you
to Herm. Those who followed me to Brecqhou buried him there. But if he had
not come I could not have got to Herm before they set their watch boats. So
he helped, you see, though he did not know it."

"My poor Helier!... They had muffled my head in a cloak so that I could
neither hear nor see. I had just gone outside--"

"Your father and Martin were in a great state about you, but I could not
wait to explain. Anything I could have said would only have added to their
anxiety, and that was