y, began to make some enquiries as to lodging
accommodation.

"My name is Sir Graham Hamilton," he said presently.

Uniacke started with surprise and looked at the stranger curiously. He
had read much of the great sea painter, of his lonely wanderings, of his
melancholy, of his extraordinary house in Kensington, and, just
recently, of his wretched condition of health, which, it was said, had
driven him suddenly from London, the papers knew not whither.

"I thought you were ill," he blurted out.

"I am not very well," the painter said simply, "and the inn here is
exceedingly uncomfortable. But I want to stay. This is the very home of
the sea. Here I find not merely the body of the sea but also its soul."

"There are no good lodgings, I am afraid," said the clergyman. "Nobody
ever wants to lodge here, it seems."

"I do. Well, then, I must keep on at the inn."

"Come to stay with me, will you?" Uniacke suddenly said. "I have a spare
room. It is scarcely ever occupied. My friends find this island a far
cry, except in the height of summer. I shall be glad of your company
and glad to make you as comfortable as I can."

"You are very kind," said the painter, hesitating. "But I scarcely--"

"Come as my guest," said the clergyman, reddening slightly.

"Thank you, I will. And some day you must come to me in London."

Now the painter was installed at the Vicarage, and blessed, each hour,
his happy escape from the inn, whose walls seemed expanded by the
forcible and athletic smell of stale fish.

Uniacke's servant girl brought in the tea. The two men had it by the
fire. Presently Hamilton said:

"Nightfall is very interesting and curious here."

"I find it so almost everywhere," Uniacke said.

"Yes. It can never be dull. But here, in winter at least, it is
extraordinarily--" he paused for the exactly right word, in a calm way
that was peculiar to him and that seemed to emphasise his fine
self-possession--"pathetic, and suggestive of calamity."

"I have noticed that, indeed," Uniacke answered, "and never, I think,
more than to-night."

Hamilton looked across at him in the firelight.

"Where did you see it fall?" he asked.

"I was by the wall of the churchyard."

"It was you, then, whom I saw from the window. It seemed to be a mourner
looking at the graves."

"I was looking at them. But nobody I care for deeply is buried there.
The night, however, in such an island as this, makes every grave seem
like the gr