arrangement that ran suddenly into a plot of streets
linking a clutter of utilitarian buildings, all converging upon the
focal point of the village wharf.

Upon this last a cloud of natives and summer folk swarmed and buzzed.
At its head a cluster of vehicles, horse-drawn as well as
motor-driven, waited. In the shadow beneath it, and upon the crescent
beach that glistened on its either side, a multitude of children,
young and old, paddled and splashed in shallows and the wash of the
steamer.

Obviously the less decorative and exclusive side of the island, it was
none the less enchanting in Sally's vision. A measure of confidence
reinfused her mood. She surrendered absolutely to fatalistic enjoyment
of the gifts the gods had sent. Half closing her eyes, she drank deep
of salt-sweet air vibrant with the living warmth of a perfect day.

A man whose common face was as impassive as a mask shouldered through
the mob and burdened himself with the hand-luggage of the party. Sally
gathered that he was valet to Mr. Savage. And they were pushing
through the gantlet of several hundred curious eyes and making
toward the head of the pier.

"Trying," Mrs. Standish observed in an aside to the girl. "I always
say that everything about the Island is charming but the getting
here."

Sally murmured an inarticulate response and wondered. Disdain of the
commonalty was implicit in that speech; it was contact with the herd,
subjection to its stares, that Mrs. Standish found so trying. How,
then, had she brought herself so readily to accept association on
almost equal terms with a shop-girl misdemeanant--out of gratitude, or
sheer goodness of heart, or something less superficial?

The shadow of an intimation that something was wrong again came
between Sally and the sun, but passed as swiftly as a wind-sped cloud.

The valet led to a heavy, seven-seated touring-car, put their luggage
in the rear, shut the door on the three, and swung up to the seat
beside the chauffeur. The machine threaded a cautious way out of the
rank, moved sedately up a somnolent street, turned a corner and
pricked up its heels to the tune of a long, silken snore, flinging
over its shoulder two miles of white, well-metalled roadway with no
appreciable effort whatever.

For a moment or two dwellings swept by like so many telegraph-poles
past a car-window. Then they became more widely spaced, and were
succeeded by a blurred and incoherent expanse of woods, fields,