d returned to Sercq, and
of my welcome there I need not tell.

My mother and Aunt Jeanne were full of questionings which taxed my wits to
breaking point to evade, especially Aunt Jeanne's. She tried to trap me in
a hundred ways, leading up from the most distant and innocent points to
that which had kept me away so long. And since truth consists as much in
not withholding as in telling, I was brought within measurable distance of
lying by Aunt Jeanne's pertinacity, for which I think the blame should
fairly rest with her.

I told them simply that I had been on matters connected with Torode, and
would still be engaged on them for some time to come, and left it there.

Carette, of course, understood, and approved all I had done. She saw with
me the necessity of keeping the matter from my mother, lest her peace of
mind should suffer shipwreck again, and to no purpose. Her loving
tenderness and thought for my mother at this time were a very great delight
to me, and commended her still more to my mother herself.

My grandfather was still in Guernsey. His leg had taken longer to heal than
it might have done, and, failing my information against the Herm men, his
was of use to the authorities in preparing the charge against them.

There were near forty prisoners brought over from Sercq, some of them so
sorely wounded that it was doubtful if they would live until their trial.
The rest had been killed, except some few who were said to have got across
to France. To my great relief neither young Torode nor his mother was among
the dead or the captives.

Krok was supposed in Sercq to be with my grandfather in Guernsey, and his
absence excited no remark. For myself, in Sercq my absence was accounted
for by the necessity for my being in Guernsey,--while in Guernsey an
exaggerated account of the wound I had received on the Coupee offered
excuse for my retirement; and so the matter passed without undue comment.

George Hamon had informed my grandfather of his recognition of Torode, and
he told me afterwards that for a very long time the old man flatly refused
to believe it.

My news of Torode's recovery was not, I think, over-welcome to Uncle
George. He would have preferred him dead, and the old trouble buried for
ever, forgetting always that his death must have left something of a cloud
on my life, though he always argued strongly against that view of the case.

"I find it hard to swallow, mon gars, in spite of George Hamon's
as