nt away up the Avenue and across
the fields home.

And he went thoughtfully. It was annoying this man cropping up like
this at the eleventh hour. Nothing, he felt sure, would come of his
interference, but it might disturb Margaret and the general harmony of
to-morrow's proceedings.

Her wedding-day is a somewhat nervous time for a girl, under the best
of circumstances, he supposed. And though Margaret was as little given
to nerves as anyone he had ever met, the possibility of a public
attempt to stop her wedding might be fairly calculated to upset her.

Feudal as were the laws of the island, he could hardly knock Pixley on
the head, as would have happened in less anachronistic times. And so
he went thoughtfully.

XII

Margaret and Miss Penny were lying in long chairs on the verandah when
he came over the green wall into the Red House garden, by the same gap
as he had used that first morning when he came upon Margaret standing
in the hedge.

They were resting from labours, joyful, but none the less tiring.

"Jock, we were just wanting you!" said Margaret, sitting up. "Have all
the things come all right?"

"All come all right," and he wondered how she would take his next
announcement. "In fact more came than we expected."

"I guess we can use it all," said Miss Penny. "You've no idea of the
capacity of children. I know something about it, and these children
are more expansible even than school-girls."

"I was surprised to meet a gentleman down there who says he has come
across on purpose for the wedding."

"A gentleman--come for the wedding?" and both girls eyed him as
pictured terriers greet the word "Rats!"

"I'll give you three guesses."

"Mr. Pixley," said Miss Penny.

"Bull's-eye first shot! Clever girl!"

"Not really, Jock!" said Margaret, with a suspicion of dismay in her
voice.

"Well, Charles Svendt anyway--as representing the old man, he says."

"But what has he come for, and how did he get to know?"

"I didn't ask him. It was quite enough to see him there. He says he's
going to stop it,"--and Margaret's cheeks flamed,--"but I've assured
him that he can't, and I'll take jolly good care that he doesn't, if I
have to knock him on the head and drop him off the Coupee."

"It would be shameful of him if he tried," cried Miss Penny. "Just let
me have a talk with him, Mr. Graeme, and I'll make him wish he'd never
been born. He's really not such a bad sort, you know. Where is he?"

"I left h