f the saw-toothed chasms he saw a piece of wood sticking up, and
climbed along to get it as first contribution to his fire. And when he
got to it, down below in the gully, he found jammed the whole side of a
boat, flung up there by some high spring tide and trapped before it
could escape. Excellent wood for his firing, well tarred and fairly dry.
He hauled and pulled till he had it all safely up, and then he carried
it, load after load, to his house, and laid it out in the sun to dry
still more.

He worked hard all day, keeping a wary outlook for any stray fishermen.

First he culled a great heap of the thin wiry grass which seemed the
chief product of his rock, and spread it also to dry for a couch. There
was no bracken for bedding, no gorse for firing. The grass would supply
the place of the one, the broken boat the other.

Then he made good all the holes in his walls and roof, except one in the
latter for the escape of the smoke, and built a solid wall of the tufted
cushions round the seaward side of his doorway, as a screen against his
light being seen, and as a protection from the south-west wind if it
should blow up strong in the night.

He found it very strange to be toiling on these elemental matters, with
never a soul to speak to. He felt like a castaway on a desert island,
with the additional oddness of knowing himself to be within reach of his
kind, yet debarred from any communication with them on pain, possibly,
of death.

At times he felt like a condemned criminal, yet knew that he had done no
wrong, and that it was only the mistaken justice of a simple people
that wanted blood for blood, and was not over-heedful as to whose blood
so long as its own sense of justice was satisfied.

But, he kept saying to himself, things might have been worse with him,
very much worse, but for Nance and Bernel. And before long, any day, the
matter might be cleared up and himself reinstated in the opinion of the
Sark men.

Even that would leave much to be desired, but possibly, he thought, if
they found they had sorely misjudged him in this matter, they might
realize that they had done so in other matters also, and that he had
only been striving to do his duty as he saw it.

And then, wherever else his thoughts led him, there was always Nance,
and the thought of Nance always set his heart aglow and braced him to
patient endurance and hope.

He retraced, again and again, all the ways they had travelled together
in t