n upon the table, and the old woman looked at it
carefully, and with a pleased expression; but she put it in her purse,
and walked away with it, giving me no change. Not that I altogether
expected any change; they provided me with every thing I needed, and
waited upon me with very careful service; yet now I could calculate
exactly how long I should be safe in this refuge, and the calculation
gave me great uneasiness. In a few months I should find myself still in
need of refuge, but without the means of paying for it. What would
become of me then?

Very slowly the winter wore on. How shall I describe the peaceful
monotony, the dull, lonely safety of those dark days and long nights? I
had been violently tossed from a life of extreme trouble and peril into
a profound, unbroken, sleepy security. At first the sudden change
stupefied me; but after a while there came over me an uneasy
restlessness, a longing to get away from the silence and solitude, even
if it were into insecurity and danger. I began to wonder how the world
beyond the little island was going on. No news reached us from without.
Sometimes for weeks together it was impossible for an open boat to cross
over to Guernsey; even when a cutter accomplished its voyage out and in,
no letters could arrive for me. The season was so far advanced when I
went to Sark, that those visitors who had been spending a portion of the
summer there had already taken their departure, leaving the islanders to
themselves. They were sufficient for themselves; they and their own
affairs formed the world. Tardif would bring home almost daily little
scraps of news about the other families scattered about Sark; but of the
greater affairs of life in other countries he could tell me nothing.

Yet why should I call these greater affairs? Each to himself is the
centre of the world. It was a more important thing to me that I was
safe, than that the freedom of England itself should be secure.

CHAPTER THE SIXTH.

TOO MUCH ALONE.

Yet looking back upon that time, now it is past, and has "rounded itself
into that perfect star I saw not when I dwelt therein," it would be
untrue to represent myself as in any way unhappy. At times I wished
earnestly that I had been born among these people, and could live
forever among them.

By degrees I discovered that Tardif led a somewhat solitary life
himself, even in this solitary island, with its scanty population. There
was an ugly church standing