We saw their fine dark heads, bowed low with splendid

dignity to watch us, forgetting for a moment that the stars were caught

in the needled network of their hair. Against the sky in the west,

where still lingered the sunset gold, we saw the wild toss of the

horizon, shaggy with forest and cliff, gripping the heart like the

motive in a symphony, and sending the sense of beauty all a-shiver

through the mind—all these surrounding islands standing above the

water like low clouds, and like them seeming to post along silently

into the engulfing night. We heard the musical drip-drip of the paddle,

and the little wash of our waves on the shore, and then suddenly we

found ourselves at the opening of the lagoon again, having made the

complete circuit of our home.

The Reverend Timothy had awakened from sleep and was

singing to himself; and the sound of his voice as we glided down the

fifty yards of enclosed water was pleasant to hear and undeniably

wholesome. We saw the glow of the fire up among the trees on the ridge,

and his shadow moving about as he threw on more wood.

“There you are!” he called aloud. “Good again! Been

setting the night-lines, eh? Capital! And your mother’s still fast

asleep, Joan.”

His cheery laugh floated across the water; he had

not been in the least disturbed by our absence, for old campers are not

easily alarmed.

“Now, remember,” he went on, after we had told our

little tale of travel by the fire, and Mrs. Maloney had asked for the

fourth time exactly where her tent was and whether the door faced east

or south, “every one takes their turn at cooking breakfast, and one of

the men is always out at sunrise to catch it first. Hubbard, I’ll toss

you which you do in the morning and which I do!” He lost the toss.

“Then I’ll catch it,” I said, laughing at his discomfiture, for I knew

he loathed stirring porridge. “And mind you don’t burn it as you did

every blessed time last year on the Volga,” I added by way of reminder.

Mrs. Maloney’s fifth interruption about the door of

her tent, and her further pointed observation that it was past nine

o’clock, set us lighting lanterns and putting the fire out for safety.

But before we separated for the night the clergyman

had a time-honoured little ritual of his own to go through that no one

had the heart to deny him. He always did this. It was a relic of his

pulpit habits. He glanced briefly from one to the other of us, his face

grave and earnest, his hands lifted to the stars and his eyes all

closed and puckered up beneath a momentary frown. Then he offered up a

short, almost inaudible prayer, thanking Heaven for our safe arrival,

begging for good weather, no illness or accidents, plenty offish, and

strong sailing winds.

And then, unexpectedly—no one knew why exactly—he

ended up with an abrupt request that nothing from the kingdom of

darkness should be allowed to afflict our peace, and no evil thing come

near to disturb us in the night-time.

And while he uttered these last surprising words, so

strangely unlike his usual ending, it chanced that I looked up and let

my eyes wander round the group assembled about the dying fire. And it

certainly seemed to me that Sangree’s face underwent a sudden and

visible alteration. He was staring at Joan, and as he stared the change

ran over it like a shadow and was gone. I started in spite of myself,

for something oddly concentrated, potent, collected, had come into the

expression usually so scattered and feeble. But it was all swift as a

passing meteor, and when I looked a second time his face was normal and

he was looking among the trees.

And Joan, luckily, had not observed him, her head

being bowed and her eyes tightly closed while her father prayed.

“The girl has a vivid imagination indeed,” I

thought, half laughing, as I lit the lanterns, “if her thoughts can put

a glamour upon mine in this way”; and yet somehow, when we said

good-night, I took occasion to give her a few vigorous words of

encouragement, and went to her tent to make sure I could find it

quickly in the night in case anything happened. In her quick way the

girl understood and thanked me, and the last thing I heard as I moved

off to the men’s quarters was Mrs. Maloney crying that there were

beetles in her tent, and Joan’s laughter as she went to help her turn

them out.

Half an hour later the island was silent as the

grave, but for the mournful voices of the wind as it sighed up from the

sea. Like white sentries stood the three tents of the men on one side

of the ridge, and on the other side, half hidden by some birches, whose

leaves just shivered as the breeze caught them, the women’s tents,

patches of ghostly grey, gathered more closely together for mutual

shelter and protection. Something like fifty yards of broken ground,

grey rock, moss and lichen, lay between, and over all lay the curtain

of the night and the great whispering winds from the forests of

Scandinavia.

And the very last thing, just before floating away

on that mighty wave that carries one so softly oft” into the deeps of

forgetfulness, I again heard the voice of John Silence as the train

moved out of Victoria Station; and by some subtle connection that met

me on the very threshold of consciousness there rose in my mind

simultaneously the memory of the girl’s half-given confidence, and of

her distress. As by some wizardry of approaching dreams they seemed in

that instant to be related; but before I could analyse the why and the

wherefore, both sank away out of sight again, and I was off beyond

recall.

“Unless you should send for me sooner.”

II

Whether Mrs. Maloney’s tent door opened south or

east I think she never discovered, for it is quite certain she always

slept with the flap tightly fastened; I only know that my own little

“five by seven, all silk” faced due east, because next morning the sun,

pouring in as only the wilderness sun knows how to pour, woke me early,

and a moment later, with a short run over soft moss and a flying dive

from the granite ledge, I was swimming in the most sparkling water

imaginable.

It was barely four o’clock, and the sun came down a

long vista of blue islands that led out to the open sea and Finland.

Nearer by rose the wooded domes of our own property, still capped and

wreathed with smoky trails of fast-melting mist, and looking as fresh

as though it was the morning of Mrs. Maloney’s Sixth Day and they had

just issued, clean and brilliant, from the hands of the great Architect.

In the open spaces the ground was drenched with dew,

and from the sea a cool salt wind stole in among the trees and set the

branches trembling in an atmosphere of shimmering silver. The tents

shone white where the sun caught them in patches. Below lay the lagoon,

still dreaming of the summer night; in the open the fish were jumping

busily, sending musical ripples towards the shore; and in the air hung

the magic of dawn—silent, incommunicable.

I lit the fire, so that an hour later the clergyman

should find good ashes to stir his porridge over, and then set forth

upon an examination of the island, but hardly had I gone a dozen yards

when I saw a figure standing a little in front of me where the sunlight

fell in a pool among the trees.

It was Joan. She had already been up an hour, she

told me, and had bathed before the last stars had left the sky. I saw

at once that the new spirit of this solitary region had entered into

her, banishing the fears of the night, for her face was like the face

of a happy denizen of the wilderness, and her eyes stainless and

shining.