ucing me, except to Mrs. Treacher."

"Ah, to be sure, there is Mrs. Treacher!" the Commandant murmured.
"But, madam, all the rooms in the Castle are unfurnished, ruinous, and
have been ruinous for fifty years. The Treachers occupy the only two in
which it were possible to swing a cat."

"Then we must borrow Mrs. Treacher and take her along to the Barracks
for chaperon. You may leave it to me to persuade her."

Without waiting for his answer she ran lightly up the steps, the heels
of her rose-coloured satin shoes twinkling in the light of the
Commandant's lantern as he blundered after her.

The pavement of the quay had not been laid for satin shoes. Much
traffic had worn the surface into depressions, and these depressions
were fast collecting water from the drenched air. But although the fog
lay almost as thick here as at the foot of the steps, she picked her
way among these pitfalls, avoiding them as though by instinct. Beyond
the quay came a cobbled causeway; and beyond the causeway a narrow
street wound up towards the garrison gate. Past rains, pouring down the
hill, had worn a deep rut along this street, ploughing it here and
there to the native rock, zig-zagging from centre to side of the
roadway and back again obedient to the trend of the slope. But over the
causeway, and up the channelled street she found her footing with the
same confidence, steering far more cleverly than the Commandant, who
followed as in a dream, amazed, oppressed with forebodings. It was all
very well for her to talk lightly of persuading Mrs. Treacher. If she
could, why then she must be possessed of a secret as yet unrevealed to
Mrs. Treacher's husband after thirty-odd years of married life. The
Commandant, too, knew something of Mrs. Treacher ... an obstinate
woman, not to say pig-headed.

Was she a witch--this stranger in silk and jewels who walked in
darkness so confidently up the tortuous unpaved street?--this
apparition who, coming out of the seas and the dumb fog, talked of the
Islands and the Islanders as though she had known them all her life?

As if to prove she was a witch, she paused before the very cottage
which once already to-night had given pause to his steps and to his
thoughts. The fog had been thinning little by little as they mounted
the hill, and at a few paces' distance he recognized the closed door,
daubed over with that same staring paint which your true Islander uses
for choice upon his boat.

"You remember th