though a
little unready, but of passing hours some only did not float clean out of
mind to be forgotten. This was a deficiency that mended by degrees, and
in time bid fair to pass. Where the break began, none who loved him
ventured to discover. Once when, as shall be told, Giles incautiously
touched, Christian turned a dazed, painful face, and grew white and
whiter, and presently laid his head down on his arms and slept deeply. In
those days frequent slumbers fell, and for the most part memory was
blurred behind them.

Lois in her heart sometimes had a secret doubt that oblivion had not
entirely satisfied him. His reason seemed too serviceable to lie down
without an effort; and it was hard to imagine how it could account for
certain scars that his body would carry to the grave; or account for the
loss of two boats--the old drudge and his own murdered Beloved. Yet when
in his presence they held anxious debate on the means to a new boat, he
listened and made no comment.

The poor wronged household was hardly set. Restitution was unlooked for,
and not to be enforced, for woe betide any who against the tyranny of the
fishers' law invoked higher powers and another code. Though now the alien
was tolerated under a milder estimate, an outcast he remained, and none
were so hardy as to offer fellowship with him and his. The cost of a boat
was more than Giles could contrive on his own poor securities, and none
could he find to share for profit or risk in any concern that Christian
would be handling. It was only on his Reverence offering surety for
instalments that the dread of ruin and exile for one and all passed them
by, and means to a livelihood were obtained.

Together, as in the long past days when Christian was yet a child, and
Giles was still hale, the old man and the young returned to daily toil on
the coral shoals. Giles was the better man of the two at the first, for
necessity had admitted of no delay; but as the younger gained in strength
the elder lost; by the month's end his feeble stock of strength,
overdrawn, failed suddenly, not enough remaining for him to potter about
the quay as before. In months succeeding, his goings came to be
straitened, first to the garden, then to the house, then to one seat, one
bed. Before the year's end it was to be to the straitest lodging of
all--green turfed.

Alone, quite alone again, with sea and sky whispering together round him,
and no sail near, well might those who loved Chr