rope and some foot-holes in the
rock, and finally a zigzag path, invited further ascent still.

The portmanteaux were hauled up by a rope and shouldered by his
guardian angels, and they toiled slowly up the steep.

Each step developed new beauties behind and on either side. At the top
he would fain have rested to drink it all in, but his guides went
stolidly on,--towards drink of a more palpable description, he doubted
not; and he remembered that time was of consekens, and tore himself
away from that most wonderful view and panted after them.

The zigzag path led round clumps of flaming gorse to a gap in a rough
stone wall, and so to a tall granite pillar which crowned the cliff
and commemorated a disaster. It was erected, he saw, to the memory of
a Mr. Jeremiah Pilcher who had been drowned just below in attempting
the passage to Guernsey. He had but one regret at the moment--that it
was not instead to the memory of Mr. Jeremiah Pixley.

III

Down verdant lanes--past thatched cottages, past a windmill, past
houses of more substantial mien, with a glimpse down a rolling green
valley----

"Hotel?" asked the ancient abruptly, from beneath his load.

"No, I want rooms in some cottage. Can you----"

"John Philip," said the ancient one didactically, and trudged on, and
finally dumped his share of the burden at the door of what looked like
a house but was a shop, in fact the shop.

He went inside and Graeme followed him. A genial-faced elderly man,
with gray hair and long gray beard and gray shirt-sleeves, leaned over
the counter, talking in an unknown tongue to a blue-guernseyed
fisherman, and a quiet-faced old lady in a black velvet hair-net stood
listening.

They all looked up and saluted the ancient one with ejaculations of
surprise in the unknown tongue, and Graeme stared hard at the
gray-bearded man, while they all discussed him to his face.

"Mr. De Carteret," said the ancient at last, with a jerk of the head
towards Gray-Beard. "He tell you where to find rooms."

"Thanks! Do you speak any English, Mr. De Carteret?"

The pleasant old face broke into a smile. "I am En-glish," he said,
with a quaint soft intonation, and as one who speaks a foreign tongue,
and beamed genially on his young compatriot.

"That's all right then. Do you know you're very like Count Tolstoi?"

"I haf been told so, but I do not know him. What is it you would like,
if you please to tell me?"

"I want a sitting-room and a bedr