keeping of this record, he
had no habits, certainly no precision, no remembrance, no system: the
business of his life ended there. He had quietly vacated two curacies
because there had been bitter complaints that the records of certain
baptisms, marriages, and burials might only be found in the chequered
journal of his life, sandwiched between fantastic reflections and
remarks upon the rubric. The records had been exact enough, but the
system was not canonical, and it rested too largely upon the personal
ubiquity of the itinerary priest, and the safety of his journal--and of
his life.

Guida, after the instincts of her nature, had at once sought the highest
point on the rocky islet, and there she drank in the joy of sight and
sound and feeling. She could see--so perfect was the day--the line
marking the Minquiers far on the southern horizon, the dark and perfect
green of the Jersey slopes, and the white flags of foam which beat
against the Dirouilles and the far-off Paternosters, dissolving as
they flew, their place taken by others, succeeding and succeeding, as
a soldier steps into a gap in the line of battle. Something in these
rocks, something in the Paternosters--perhaps their distance, perhaps
their remoteness from all other rocks--fascinated her. As she looked
at them, she suddenly felt a chill, a premonition, a half-spiritual,
half-material telegraphy of the inanimate to the animate: not from
off cold stone to sentient life; but from that atmosphere about the
inanimate thing, where the life of man has spent itself and been
dissolved, leaving--who can tell what? Something which speaks but yet
has no sound.

The feeling which possessed Guida as she looked at the Paternosters was
almost like blank fear. Yet physical fear she had never felt, not since
that day when the battle raged in the Vier Marchi, and Philip d'Avranche
had saved her from the destroying scimitar of the Turk. Now that scene
all came back to her in a flash, as it were; and she saw again the dark
snarling face of the Mussulman, the blue-and-white silk of his turban,
the black and white of his waistcoat, the red of the long robe, and the
glint of his uplifted sword. Then in contrast, the warmth, brightness,
and bravery on the face of the lad in blue and gold who struck aside
the descending blade and caught her up in his arms; and she had nestled
there--in those arms of Philip d'Avranche. She remembered how he had
kissed her, and how she had kissed h