lid of the can, I prevailed on Carette to drink some too. We had both been
not a little shaken by these happenings, and the fiery life in the spirit
pulled us together and braced the slackened ropes. I dropped a little into
Torode also, and it ran down his throat, but he showed no sign of
appreciation, and I doubted the fine liquor was wasted.

Then, as there was no chance of sleep, I lit my pipe and found comfort in
it, and regretted that Carette had no similar consolation of her own,
though I do not take to women smoking as I have seen many of them do
abroad. But there was not even a crust to eat, so we sat and talked in
whispers of the very strange fate, or chance, or the leading of God, that
had brought Torode to us in this remote place into which we had fled to
escape him.

"But, Phil, however did he get here?" asked Carette. "For Uncle George said
that no living man--?"

"It was that made me think him a ghost," I said, "until I heard his flint
and steel, which no ghost needs."

"Did he come in the way we did?"

"He was standing just there when I woke. I'll go and look," and I crept
away down the narrow way till I found myself against the piled stones which
blocked it, and felt certain that no one had passed that way since George
Hamon went out and closed the door behind him. I heard the in-coming tide
gurgling in the channel outside, and returned to Carette much puzzled.

"He must have come by way of the Boutiques," I said, "for those stones have
not been moved."

"And yet Uncle George seemed certain that no one besides himself knew of
this place. 'No living man'--that is what he said."

"He'll be the more surprised when he comes," I said, and we left it there.

The sight of Monsieur Torode lying there like a dead man was not a
cheerful one, so we left him and went to our usual place by the water-cave.
And, when we came to the well, Carette said, "Ugh! it looks as if it knew
all about it," and the bulging eye of the spring goggled furiously at us as
we passed.

We had nothing to eat all that day, but drinks of water, mixed now and then
with a little cognac. For myself it did not matter much, for I had my pipe,
but I felt keenly for Carette. She would not admit that she was hungry, but
during the afternoon she fell asleep leaning against me, and I sat very
still lest I should waken her to her hunger. And her face as it lay against
my arm was like the face of a saint, so sweet and pure and heedless of th