, for I knew you could not credit it unless you saw him
yourself."

"But how--?" she faltered.

"He was among Torode's crew--he was wounded. I recognised him, and we got
him away lest--well, you understand? He has been living on the Ecrehous,
and he died there yesterday. Will you see him?" and he looked at her very
earnestly, and she knew all that his look meant.

Her silence seemed long, while Uncle George looked at her entreatingly, and
she looked at the floor, and seemed lost in thought.

"Yes," she said at last, and Went towards the door.

"Put on a shawl. The night is cold," said Uncle George, and it seemed to me
that there was something of a new and gentle right in his tone, something
of proprietorship in his manner.

And so we went along the footpaths past La Moinerie and down the zigzag
into Port du Moulin, the only bay along that coast into which my mother
could possibly have gone by night, and that was why Uncle George had
brought him there.

I do not think a word was spoken all the way. Krok held the lantern for my
mother's feet. Uncle George walked close behind her, and at times before
her, in the descent, and helped her down, and so we came at last to the
shingle and crunched over it to the boat.

Krok put down his lantern on a rock, and he and Uncle George got in and
pulled out to the lugger which was anchored about twenty yards out.

They came back presently, and lifted out the body and laid it gently on the
stones, and Krok brought his lantern. My mother's face was very white and
pinched as she knelt down beside it, and at first sight she started and
looked quickly up at Uncle George as though in doubt or denial. And
presently Uncle George bent down and with his hand lifted the moustache
back from the dead man's mouth, and my mother gazed into the dark face and
said quietly, "It is he," then she seized my grandfather's arm suddenly and
turned away. They were stumbling over the rough stones when Krok ran after
them with the lantern and came back in the dark.

We laid the body in the boat again, and Krok lifted in some great round
stones, and we rowed out to the black loom of the lugger. Uncle George lit
his own lantern, and by its dim light Krok set to work preparing my
father's body for its last journey.

Whether he was simply anxious to get done with the business, or whether he
felt a gloomy satisfaction in performing these last rites for a man whom he
had always hated for his treatment of m