gate and awaited the arrival of the
vehicle.

It was a light cart, and a man jumped down as it stopped. He was in a
broad-brimmed hat, under which no more of him could be perceived than
that he wore a black beard clipped like a yew fence--a typical aspect in
the island.

'You are Avice's husband?' asked the sculptor quickly.

The man replied that he was, in the local accent. 'I've just come in by
to-day's boat,' he added. 'I couldn't git here avore. I had contracted
for the job at Peter-Port, and had to see to't to the end.'

'Well,' said Pierston, 'your coming means that you are willing to make
it up with her?'

'Ay, I don't know but I be,' said the man. 'Mid so well do that as
anything else!'

'If you do, thoroughly, a good business in your old line awaits you here
in the island.'

'Wi' all my heart, then,' said the man. His voice was energetic, and,
though slightly touchy, it showed, on the whole, a disposition to set
things right.

The driver of the trap was paid off, and Jocelyn and Isaac
Pierston--undoubtedly scions of a common stock in this isle of
intermarriages, though they had no proof of it--entered the house.
Nobody was in the ground-floor room, in the centre of which stood a
square table, in the centre of the table a little wool mat, and in the
centre of the mat a lamp, the apartment having the appearance of being
rigidly swept and set in order for an event of interest.

The woman who lived in the house with Avice now came downstairs, and
to the inquiry of the comers she replied that matters were progressing
favourably, but that nobody could be allowed to go upstairs just then.
After placing chairs and viands for them she retreated, and they sat
down, the lamp between them--the lover of the sufferer above, who had no
right to her, and the man who had every right to her, but did not love
her. Engaging in desultory and fragmentary conversation they listened
to the trampling of feet on the floor-boards overhead--Pierston full of
anxiety and attentiveness, Ike awaiting the course of nature calmly.

Soon they heard the feeble bleats repeated, and then the local
practitioner descended and entered the room.

'How is she now?' said Pierston, the more taciturn Ike looking up with
him for the answer that he felt would serve for two as well as for one.

'Doing well, remarkably well,' replied the professional gentleman, with
a manner of having said it in other places; and his vehicle not being at
the d