e lower half of me looking a bit less like a pen-wiper.
But what be I to do with the pesky things? Return 'em?"

"On no account. You might even thank him--by word of mouth--if you have
not already done so."

"I haven't. To tell the truth, the pattern took me so aback at first
going off.... But when you came in by the gate, there, I was turning it
over in my mind that the garrison oughtn't to be beholden to a
civilian----"

"Quite right, Archelaus."

"And, that bein' so, it might be dignified-like to return gift for
gift. Now, the Lord Proprietor's terrible fond of bulbs; 'tis a new
craze with him; and in spading over the border here I'd a-turned up a
dozen or so of those queer-looking Lent-lilies you set such store
by----" Sergeant Archelaus pointed towards a little heap of daffodil
bulbs carelessly strewn on the up-turned soil.

These bulbs had a history.

Close on thirty years before, a certain Dutch skipper--his name is
forgotten--happened to be sailing for Bordeaux with a general cargo,
which included some thousands of tulips, and a few almost priceless
ones, for a rich purchaser who wished to introduce tulip-culture into
the Gironde. The Dutchman's vessel was a flat-bottomed galliot, fitted
with lee-boards, but liable to fall away from the wind; and,
encountering a strong southerly gale as he attempted to round Ushant,
he was blown northward into the fogs, and, through the fogs, upon the
Islands.

Against what followed, the chances were at least a thousand to one. His
vessel, blind as to her whereabouts, and helpless among the tide-races,
missed rock after rock, blundered her way past every sunken peril--to
be sure, she was flat-bottomed, but the soundings varied so from moment
to moment that the crew, after running a dozen times to the boats in
the certainty of striking, fully believed themselves bewitched; until,
in St. Lide's Pool, as they made seven fathoms and hoped for open
water, the fog lifted suddenly, and they saw Garrison Hill right above
them.

This befell them a short hour before sunset. The skipper rounded up to
the wind, dropped anchor, got out a boat, and groped his way
shoreward--for the fog had descended again, even more speedily than it
had lifted.

Groping his way, and still attended by his amazing good luck, the
Dutchman, where he had expected rocks, came plump on a pier of hewn
masonry. At the pier-head, which loomed high above them, a man struck a
light and displayed a lantern; a