sallow, and more marked.

He bowed low with the foreign courtesy which used to be so offensive
to his contemporaries, and offered a delicate, beringed hand to lead
the young lady to the little table, where grilled fowl and rolls,
both showing the cookery of Hans, were prepared for her.

"I hope you rested well, and have an appetite this morning."

"Sir, what does it all mean? Where am I?" asked Anne, drawing
herself up with the native dignity that she felt to be her defence.

"In Elf-land," he said, with a smile, as he heaped her plate.

"Speak in earnest," she entreated. "I cannot eat till I understand.
It is no time for trifling! Life and death hang on my reaching
London! If you saved me from those men, let me go free."

"No one can move at present," he said. "See here."

He drew back a curtain, opened first one door and then another, and
she saw sheets of driving rain, and rising, roaring waves, with surf
which came beating in on the force of such a fearful gust of wind
that Peregrine hastily shut the door, not without difficulty.
"Nobody can stir at present," he said, as they came into the warm
bright room again. "It is a frightful tempest, the worst known here
for years, they say. The dead-lights, as they call them, have been
put in, or the windows would be driven in. Come and taste Hans's
work; you know it of old. Will you drink tea? Do you remember how
your mother came to teach mine to brew it, and how she forgave me
for being graceless enough to squirt at her?"

There was something so gentle and reassuring in the demeanour of
this strange being that Anne, convinced of the utter hopelessness of
confronting the storm, as well as of the need of gathering strength,
allowed herself to be placed in a chair, and to partake of the food
set before her, and the tea, which was served without milk, in an
exquisite dragon china cup, but with a saucer that did not match it.

"We don't get our sets perfect," said Peregrine, with a smile, who
was waiting on her as if she were a princess.

"I entreat you to tell me where we are!" said Anne. "Not in
France?"

"No, not in France! I wish we were."

"Then--can this be the Island?"

"Yes, the Island it is," said Peregrine, both speaking as South
Hants folk; "this is the strange cave or chasm called Black Gang
Chine."

"Black Gang! Oh! the highwaymen, the pirates! You have saved me
from them. Were they going to send me to the plantations?"

"You need