ween him and his
usual bed-time. Returning to his office, he met Archelaus on the
stairs.

"Going to bed, eh?" asked the Commandant.

"Ay, sir," Archelaus answered, and paused for that remark on the
weather which, in the Islands, always goes with "Good morning" or "Good
night." "Glass don't vary very much, and wind don't vary, though
seemin' to me it's risin' a little. Still in the nor'west it is; and
here ends another day."

The Commandant looked at him sharply, but passed downstairs with no
more than a "Good night." So Archelaus, too, was feeling life to be
empty?... Archelaus had bewailed the past before now, and the vanished
glories of the garrison, but never the tedium of his present lot.

The Commandant, on re-entering his office, did a very unusual thing. It
has been said that he could no longer afford himself tobacco. But an
old briar pipe lay on the chimney-piece among a litter of notes and
memoranda that had escaped the afternoon's holocaust. He took it up
wistfully, and, searching in a jar, at the end of the shelf, found a
few crumbs of tobacco. Scraped together with care, they all but filled
the bowl. He lit the dry stuff from a spill--the last scrap of paper to
be sacrificed--and sank, puffing, into his worn arm-chair.

It was in his mind to map out his domestic expenditure for the coming
month; for the settlement with Mr. Tregaskis had made a desperate
inroad upon his funds in hand, and he gravely doubted that even with
the severest pinching he would be able to remit the usual allowance to
his sister-in-law. The question had to be faced ... he was not afraid
of it ... and yet his thoughts shirked it and wandered away, despite
all effort to rally them. "Old enough to be her father...." He had
foreseen that these words would awake to torment him; but he was not
prepared for the insistency with which the pain stirred, now when long
toil should have deadened it--now when, as the clock told him that his
hopes for to-day were vain, he realised how fondly all the while he had
been building on them.

"Old enough to be her father."--For distraction from the maddening
refrain he rose up, drew the guitar again from its box, unwrapped it,
and took it back to his chair for another examination. He noticed the
wrapper as he laid it aside. It was new; the material new, the
stitching new. She had sent for the instrument with a purpose, and the
oilskin case had been made with a purpose.... How went the old song?--