dy or the reverse. But he felt nearly sure
that if the painter's fears were proved suddenly to him to be well
founded, he might not improbably fall into a condition of permanent
melancholia, or even of active despair. Despite his apparent
hopelessness, he was at present sustained by ignorance of the fate of
little Jack. He did not actually know him dead. The knowledge would
knock a prop from under him. He would fall into some dreadful abyss. The
young clergyman's deceit alone held him back. But it might be discovered
at any moment. One of the islanders might chance to observe the
defacement of the tomb. A gossiping woman might mention to Sir Graham
the name that had vanished. Yet these chances were remote. A drowned
stranger boy is naught to such folk as these, bred up in familiarity
with violent death. Long ago they had ceased to talk of the schooner
"Flying Fish," despite the presence of the mad Skipper, despite the
sound of church bells in the night. Fresh joys, or tragedies, absorbed
them. For even the island world has its record. Time plants his
footsteps upon the loneliest land. And the dwellers note his onward
tour.

Uniacke reckoned the chances for and against the discovery of his
furtive act of mercy and its revelation to his guest. The latter
outnumbered the former. Yet Uniacke walked nervously as one on the verge
of disaster. In the Island cottages that morning he bore himself
uneasily in the presence of his simple-minded parishioners. Sitting
beside an invalid, whose transparent mind was dimly, but with ardent
faith, set on Heaven, he felt hideously unfitted to point the way to
that place into which no liar shall ever come. He was troubled, and
prayed at random for the dying--thinking of the dead. At the same time
he felt himself the chief of sinners and knew that there was a devil in
him capable of repeating his nocturnal act. Never before had he gathered
so vital a knowledge of the complexity of man. He saw the threads of him
all ravelled up. When he finished his prayers at the bedside, the
invalid watched him with the critical amazement of illness.

He went out trembling and conscience-stricken. When he reached the
churchyard on his way homewards, he saw Sir Graham moving among the
graves. He had apparently just come out from the Rectory and was making
his way to the low stone wall, over which shreds of foam were being
blown by the wind. Uniacke hastened his steps, and hailed Sir Graham in
a loud and ha