to hear it, and it was
high time too. He told her to keep all his letters till he sent for
them. He had no importunate correspondents, his next book was as good
as placed, and all he desired at the moment was to cut the painter,
and drift into some quiet backwater where he could lie up till life
should wear a more cheerful face.

And so no single soul knew where he had gone, and he said to himself,
somewhat bitterly, and quite untruthfully, that no single soul cared.

He had paced the deck all night. The swift smooth motion of the boat,
with a slight slow roll in it, was very soothing; and the first
tremulous hints of the dawn, and the wonder of its slow unfolding, and
the coming of the sun were things to be remembered.

The cold gaunt aloofness, and weltering loneliness of the Casquets
appealed to him strongly. Just the kind of place, he said to himself,
for a heart-sick traveller to crawl into and grizzle until he found
himself again.

As they turned and swung in straight between the little lighthouse on
White Rock and Castle Cornet, the bright early sunshine was bathing
all the rising terraces of St. Peter Port in a golden haze. Such a
quaint medley of gray weathered walls and mellowed red roofs, from
which the thin blue smoke of early fires crept lazily up to mingle
with the haze above! Such restful banks of greenery! Such a startling
blaze of windows flashing back unconscious greetings to the sun! This
too was a sight worth remembering. For a wounded soul he was somewhat
surprised at the enjoyment these things afforded him.

A further surprise was the pleasure he found in the reduction of a
hearty appetite at an hotel on the front. Come! He was not as hard hit
as he had thought! There was life in the young dog yet.

But these encouraging symptoms were doubtless due to the temporary
exhilaration of the journey. The workaday bustle of the quays renewed
his desire for the solitary places, and he set out to find means of
transport to the little whalebacked island out there in the golden
shimmer of the sun.

There was no steamer till the following day, he learned, and delay was
not to his mind. So presently he came to an arrangement with an
elderly party in blue, with a red-weathered face and grizzled hair, to
put him and his two portmanteaux across to Sark for the sum of five
shillings English.

"To Havver Gosslin," said the aged mariner, with much emphasis, and a
canny look which conveyed to Graeme nothing m