th
the morning fire. Across the planching overhead sounded the patter of
the children's bare feet.

In a couple of minutes they came running down together, laughing on
their way, and the Commandant had to wonder again--as he had wondered
before, on the afternoon when he had sailed them home from Merryman's
Head--at their beautiful manners. They were neither shy, nor
embarrassed. Indeed, it was the Commandant who felt embarrassment (and
showed it) as he asked them to tell what had taken them to Piper's
Hole, and what they had seen there.

"We saw a mermaid," answered Annet. "She was sitting on the rock
outside the cove; and first she was singing to a kind of harp, and
afterwards she sang as she combed her hair. And then someone fired a
gun at her from the cliffs, and she disappeared, and we were frightened
and ran away. We did not see who fired the gun, nor if she was wounded.
It was not brave of us to run away so quickly, and we have been sorry
ever since."

"What nonsense is this?" growled their father. "Annet, my child, we
tell the truth--all of us--here on Saaron."

"It may have been a seal," hazarded the Commandant. "I am told that
Piper's Hole used to be a famous spot for seals."

But Annet lifted her chin and answered, her eyes steadily raised to her
father's face. "No, it was not a seal; it was a mermaid. She sang and
combed her hair just as I told you. It was beginning to grow dark, but
we could see her quite plainly." She turned for confirmation to Linnet
and Matthew Henry, and they both nodded.

Their father growled again that this was nonsense; but the Commandant,
lifting a hand, asked what had taken them to the cliffs above Piper's
Hole. It could not (he suggested) have been that they expected to catch
sight of a mermaid.

"Yes," answered Annet again; "that was just the reason." She was
speaking frankly, as a child can speak; but children have their own
code of honour, and it forbids them to give away a friend. "Jan was
telling us, only the other day," she explained with careful lucidity,
"how his father had once caught a mermaid in a pool there. We wanted
very much to see one, and so we planned to go. But afterwards, when
father rowed us home, we did not like to tell him about it. We were
afraid he would laugh at us; and we were frightened, too; afraid that
the mermaid had been hurt; and--and we were upset because father had
brought the boat for us instead of Jan Nanjulian----"

"But most of all,