eset by it at night-time
again. He began to fear going to bed, and would sit up talking to Toffy
till the small hours of the morning, or playing picquet with Dunbar. Men
began to say that he 'jawed' too much and would not let them go to bed,
little knowing how he used to try to prolong a conversation so that he
might not be left alone with a horrible fear always ready to pounce upon
him when night fell, and when only the thud of the engines playing some
maddening tune broke the silence.

He tried, with a baffling sense of impatience, to make his own memory
act, and to recall the days when he was not quite three years old. But
the thing was an impossibility, of course, and his brain refused to give
up a single picture of that time.

It was only when the ship had left St. Vincent that a certain amount of
peace came to establish itself in his heart, and the large and beautiful
consolation of the sea began to make itself felt. The weather was calm
and clear, and the monotonous slap and swish of the water against the
ship's side was in itself soothing. The company on board were all
strangers to him, and this helped to give him a feeling that he was
starting anew in life. Also he was on his way to do the best he could to
find his brother, if he were living, or to clear up the mystery of his
death, if he were dead. There was no horrid feeling of having failed to
do the best that was possible. He must find Edward Ogilvie, or discover
the grave where he lay; and after that it would be time enough to think
what would be the next thing to do.

When the ship steamed away from St. Vincent in the evening, and the
lighthouse on Bird Rock made a luminous point in the gathering darkness,
the sight of land and of the hills had done Peter good, and had restored
him to the normal and natural man again. He turned to look back at the
rugged island, with the one point of light high up in its lighthouse, and
he thought that it was like some lamp which a woman sets in the window to
guide her husband home. With that feeling came a deep sense of the love
and the confidence which he and Jane had in each other; he knew that she
would not fail him whether he were rich or poor, happy or unhappy, and
that seemed the only thing in the world worth knowing for certain.

After leaving St. Vincent the weather became intensely hot, the wind was
with the ship, and there was not a breath of air to be had. Dunbar never
felt the heat at all; he ha