right, as timidity. After all, he
said to himself, it is easy to be too rigid, too strict. In all human
dealings we must consider not only ourselves, but also the individuals
with whom we have to do. Have we the right to injure them by our
determination to take care of the welfare of our own souls? It seemed to
him just then as if virtue was often merely selfishness and implied a
lack of sympathy with others. He might have refused to lie and destroyed
his friend. Would not that have been selfishness? Would not that have
been sheer cowardice? He told himself that it would.

Calm flowed upon him. He was lost in the day-dream of the complacent man
whose load of care has fallen away into the abyss from which he has
fortunately escaped. The silence of the Island was intense to-day. His
conscience slept with the winds. And the sea slept too with all its
sorrow. He sat there like a carven figure with his face in his hand.
And, by degrees, he ceased to feel, to think actively. Conscious, not
asleep, with open eyes he remained in a placid attitude, lulled in the
arms of a quiet happiness.

He was distracted at length by some sound at a distance. It broke
through his day-dream. At first he could not tell what it was, but
presently he became aware that a hoarse voice was ejaculating some word
outside, probably in the churchyard. He took his hand from his face, sat
up straight by the writing-table and began to listen, at first with some
slight irritation. For he had been happy in his day-dream. The voice
outside repeated the word. Uniacke thought of the street-cries of London
to which he was going, and that this cry was like one of them. He heard
it again. Now it was nearer. Short and sharp, it sounded both angry
and--something else--what? Dolorous, he fancied, keen with a horror of
wonder and of despair. He remembered where he was, and that he had never
before heard such a cry on the Island. But he still sat by the table. He
was listening intently, trying to hear what was the word the voice kept
perpetually calling.

"Jack! Jack!"

Uniacke sprang up, pushing back his chair violently. It caught in a rug
that lay on the bare wooden floor and fell with a crash to the ground.

"Jack! Jack!"

The word came to his ears now in a sort of strident howl that was hardly
human. He began to tremble. But still he did not recognise the voice.

"Jack!"

It was cried under the window of the parlour, fiercely, frantically.
Uniacke knew t