ting which has lost its original clearness of tone.

"How soon will you come back again?" asked the faint, plaintive voice.

Clearly it did not occur to her that I could not pay her a visit without
great difficulty. I knew how it was next to an impossibility to get over
to Sark, for some time at least; but I felt ready to combat even
impossibilities.

"I will come back," I said--"yes, I promise to come back in a week's
time. Make haste and get well before then, mam'zelle. Good-by, now;
good-by."

I was going to sleep at Vaudin's Inn, near to Creux Harbor, from which
the cutter would sail almost before the dawn. At five o'clock we started
on oar passage--a boat-load of fishermen bound for the market. The cold
was sharp, for it was still early in March, and the easterly wind
pierced the skin like a myriad of fine needles. A waning moon was
hanging in the sky over Guernsey, and the east was growing gray with the
coming morning. By the time the sun was fairly up out of its bed of
low-lying clouds, we had rounded the southern point of Sark, and were in
sight of the Havre Gosselin. But Tardif's cottage was screened by the
cliffs, and I could catch no glimpse of it, though, as we rowed onward,
I saw a fine, thin column of white smoke blown toward us. It was from
his hearth, I knew, and, at this moment, he was preparing an early
breakfast for my invalid. I watched it till all the coast became an
indistinct outline against the sky.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.

THE SIXTIES OF GUERNSEY.

I was more than half-numb with cold by the time we landed at the quay,
opposite the Sark office. The place was all alive, seeming the more busy
and animated to me for the solitary six days I had been spending since
last Sunday. The arrival of our boat, and especially my appearance in
it, created quite a stir among the loungers who are always hanging about
the pier. By this time every individual in St. Peter-Port knew that Dr.
Martin Dobree had been missing for several days, having gone out in a
fisherman's boat to Sark the Sunday before. I had seen myself in the
glass before leaving my chamber at Vaudin's, and to some extent I
presented the haggard appearance of a shipwrecked man. A score of voices
greeted me; some welcoming, some chaffing. "Glad to see you again, old
fellow!" "What news from Sark?" "Been in quod for a week?" "His hair is
not cut short!" "No; he has tarried in Sark till his beard be grown!"
There was a circling laugh at t