Chapter I.

ne September morning, many years ago, when the Channel Islands seemed further off than they do now, and for some of them communication with the outer world hardly existed, some two hours after the sun had risen out of the sea, and while the grass and the low-growing bushes were still fresh with the morning dew, a young girl tripped lightly along the ridge of a headland which formed the south side of a cove on the coast of one of the smaller islands in the group. The ridge ascended gradually till it reached a point on which stood a ruined building, that was said to have been once a mill, and from which on the right-hand side the path began to descend to a narrow landing-place in the cove. The girl stood still for a moment when she reached the highest point, and shading her eyes looked out to sea. On the opposite side of the cove a huge rock, formed into an island by a narrow shaft of water, which in the strife of ages had cleared its way between it and the rocky coast, frowned dark and solemn in the shadow, its steep and clear-cut sides giving it a

character of power and imperturbability that crowned it a king among islands. The sea beyond was glittering in the morning sun, but there was deep purple shadow in the cove, and under the rocks of the projecting headlands, which in fantastic succession on either side threw out their weird arms into the sea; while just around the edge of the shore, where the water was shallow over rocks and weed, was a girdle of lightest, loveliest green. Guernsey, idealized in the morning mist, lay like a dream on the horizon. Here and there a fishing-boat, whose sail flashed orange when the sun touched it, was tossing on the waves; nearer in a boat with furled sail was cautiously making for the narrow passage—the Devil's Drift, as the fishermen called it—between the island and the mainland, a passage only traversed with oars, the oarsmen facing forwards; while the two occupants of another were just taking down their sail preparatory to rowing direct for the landing-place.

The moment the girl caught sight of this last boat she began rapidly to descend the 300 feet of cliff which separated her from the cove below. The path began in easy zig-zags, which, however, got gradually steeper, and the last thirty feet of the descent consisted of a sheer face of rock, in which were fixed two or three iron stanchions with a rope running from one to the other to serve as a handrail; and the climber must depend for other assistance on the natural irregularities of the rock, which provided here and there an insecure foothold. The girl, however, sprang down the dangerous path, without the slightest hesitation, though her skilful balance and dexterity of hand and foot showed that her security was the result of practice.

By the time she had reached the narrow strip of beach, one of the few and difficult landing-places which the island offered, the two fishermen were already out of the boat, which they were mooring to an iron ring fastened in the rock. One of the men was young; the other might be, from his appearance, between sixty and seventy. A strange jerking gait, which was disclosed as soon as he began to move on his own feet, suggested the idea that his natural habitat was the sea, and that he was as little at ease on land as some kinds of waterfowl appear to be when walking. He could not hold himself upright when on one foot, so that his whole person turned first to one side and then to the other as he walked.

"Marie!" he called to the girl as she alighted at the bottom of the cliff, and he shouted something briefly which the strange jargon in which it was spoken and the gruff, wind-roughened voice of the speaker, would have made unintelligible to any but a native of the islands.

The girl, without replying, took the basket of fish which he handed her, slung it on her back by a rope passed over one shoulder, and stationed herself at the foot of the path, waiting for him to begin the ascent: the younger man, who was busy with the tackle of the boat, apparently intending to stay behind.

When the old man had placed himself in position to begin the ascent, with both hands on the rope, and all his weight on one leg, the girl stooped down, and placing her lithe hands round his great wet fisherman's boot, deftly lifted the other foot and placed it in the right position on the first ledge of rock.

"Now, Daddy, hoist away!" she cried in her clear, piping voice, using, like her father, the island dialect; and he dragged himself up to the first iron hold, wriggling his large, awkward form into strange contortions, till he found a secure position and could wait till his young assistant was beside him once more. She sprang up like a cat and balanced herself safely within reach of him. It was odd to see the implicit confidence with which he let her lift and place his feet; having now to support herself by the rope she had only one hand to spare; but the feat was accomplished each time with the same precision and skill, till the precipitous part of the ascent was passed and they had commenced the zigzag path.

Then Marie took her daddy's arm under hers, and carefully steadied the difficult, ricketty gait, supporting the heavy figure with a practised skill which took the place of strength in her slight frame. Her features were formed after the same pattern as his, the definite profile, tense spreading nostril, and firm lips, being repeated with merely feminine modifications; and as her clear, merry eyes, freshened by the sea-breeze, flashed with fun at the stumblings and uncertainties of their course, they met the same expression of mirth in his hard-set, rocky face.

"You've got a rare job, child!" said he, as they stood still for breath at a turning in the path, "a basket of fish to lug up, as well as your old daddy. He'd ought to have brought them as far as the turning for you."

"I'd sooner have their company than his, any day," with a little moue in the direction of the cove. "I just wish you wouldn't take him out fishing with you, Daddy, that I do!"

"Why not, girl?"

"It's he as works for himself and cares for himself and for no one else, does Pierre," said the girl. "Comin' a moonin' round and pretending he's after courting me, when all he wants, with takin' the fish round and that, is to get the custom into his own hands, and tells folks, if he had the ordering of it, there'd be no fear about them getting their fish punctual."

"Tells 'em that, does he?" said the father, his sea-blue eyes suddenly clouding over.

"That he does; and says he'd take up the inshore fishing, if he'd the money to spend: and they should be supplied regular with crabs and shrimps and such; and then drops a word that poor André he's gettin' old, and what with being lame, and one thing and another, what can you expect, and such blathers!"

"Diable! Do you know that for certain, child?" said André, stopping in the path, and turning round upon her with a face ablaze with anger. "I should like to hear him sayin' that, I should."

"Now, Daddy," she cried with a sudden change of tone, "don't you be getting into one of your tantrums with him. Don't, there's a dear Daddy! I only told you, so you shouldn't be putting too much into his hands. But he'd be the one that would come best out of a quarrel. He's only looking for a chance of doin' you a mischief, it's my belief."

"H'm! 'Poor André a gettin' old,' is he?" grunted her father, somewhat calmed. "Poor André won't be takin' him out with him again just yet awhile—that's a certain thing. Paul Nevin would suit me a deal better in many ways, only I' bin keepin' Pierre on out o' charity, his pore father havin' bin a pal o' mine. But he's a deal stronger in the arms, is Paul."

They reached the cottage, which stood on the first piece of level ground on the way to the mainland. There was no other building within sight; and with its bleak boulders and rocks of strangest form, in perpetual death-struggle with the mighty force of ocean, resounding night and day with the rush and tramp of the wild sea-horses, as they flung themselves in despair on their rocky adversary, and with the many voices of the winds, which scarcely ever ceased blowing in that exposed spot, while the weird notes of the sea-fowl floated in the air, like the cries of wandering spirits, the solitary headland seemed indeed as if it might be the world's end.

The cottage consisted of one room, and a lean-to. Nearly half the room was taken up with a big bed, and on the other side were the fire-place and cooking utensils. Opposite the door was a box-sofa, on which Marie had slept since she was a child, and which with a small table, two chairs and a stool, completed the furniture of the room; the only light was that admitted by the doorway, the door nearly always standing open; the lean-to was little more than a dog-kennel, being formed in fact out of a great heap of stones and rubbish, which had been piled up as a protection to the cottage on the windward side; and three dogs and two hens were enjoying themselves in front of the fire.

It was here that Marie had lived, ever since she could remember, in close and contented companionship with her father: whom indeed, especially since he had the fever which crippled him three years before, she had fed, clothed, nursed and guarded with a care almost more motherly than filial.

Chapter II.

Marie was leaning over the low wall of a cottage garden in the 'village,' as a clump of small houses at the meeting of four cross-roads was called, and waiting for the kail which she had come to buy for the evening's soup from Mrs. Nevin, who cultivated a little plot of ground with fruit and vegetables. The back-door of the cottage, which opened on the garden, was ajar, and she could hear some one enter from the front with a heavy tread, and call out in a big, jovial voice, "Hullo, Mother, we're in luck to-day! You'd never guess who's goin' to take me on. Lame André, he's goin' to give Pierre the sack, and says he'll have me for a time or two to try. Says I'm strong in the shoulders, and he guesses I can do him more good than Pierre. I should think I easy could too, a pinch-faced whipper-snapper like that!"

"And high time it is too that André had his eyes opened," rejoined Mrs. Nevin; "often it is I've told Marie, as there she stands, that her father don't ought to trust the fish-sellin' too much to that Pierre: a lad as could rob his own grandmother the moment the life was out o' her body."

"Well, Mother, you've often told me about that five franc piece, but nobody can't say that she hadn't given it him before she died, as he said—"

"Given it him, I should think so, when she never would have aught to say to him for all his wheedling ways, and his brother Jacques was her favourite; and poor old lady if she'd a known that Pierre was goin' to be alone with her, when she went off suddint in a fit, I guess she'd a locked up her purse first, I do."

"Well, I must say he turned a queer colour when he heard André say he didn't want him no more: and you should have seen the look he gave him, sort of squintin' out of his eyes at him, when he went away. He ain't a man I would like to meet unawares in a dark lane, if I'd a quarrel with him."

"Hullo, where's Marie?" cried Mrs. Nevin, coming out of the door with the kail ready washed in her hand. "She never took offence at what we was sayin', think you? Folks did say, to be sure, that she and Pierre was sweet on one another some time since. Well, she's gone, any way," and the good woman stood for a few minutes in some dismay, shading her eyes as she looked down the road.

Marie's slight, girlish figure vanished quickly round the turning in the lane, and Mrs. Nevin could not see her pass swiftly by her own cottage, and up the ridge to the old mill. When she reached the point at which the path began to descend to the cove, she paused and looked down. The keen glance and alert figure, poised on guard, suggested the idea of a mother bird watching her nest from afar. The tide had gone out sufficiently for the boats to be drawn up on the eight or ten feet of the shelving shore, which was thus laid bare, and the glowing light of the sunset touched in slanting rays the head and hands of an old man seated on a rock and bending over some fishing tackle, which he seemed to be repairing.

Round the extreme point of the headland, which in a succession of uncouth shapes dropped its rocky outline into the shadowy purple sea, there was visible, hastily clambering across pathless boulders, another man, of a young and lithe figure, and with something in the eager, forward thrust of the head, crouching gait, and swift, deft footing that resembled an animal of the cat species when about to leap on its prey. He was evidently making for the cove, but would have to take the rope path in order to reach it, as there was no way of approaching it on that side except over the sheer face of rock. Marie was further from the rope than he was, but her path was easier. The moment her eye caught sight of the crouching, creeping figure, she sped like a hare down the path, till she reached a point at which she was on a level with the man, at a distance of about a hundred feet. There she stood, uncertain a moment, then turned to meet him. He seemed too intent on his object in the cove to notice her advance, till she was within speaking distance, when she suddenly called to him "Pierre!"

Her clear, defiant tone put the meaning of a whole discourse into the word. The man turned sharply round with an expression of vindictive malice in his fox-like face.

"Well, what do you want?"

"What are you doing here, please?"

"What's that to you, I should like to know?"

"Come nearer, then I can hear what you say."

"I sha'n't come no nearer than I choose."

"Don't be afraid. I ain't a-goin' to hurt you!"

The taunt seemed to have effect, for he leaped hurriedly along over the rocky path, with an angry, threatening air that would have frightened some girls. Marie stood like the rock beneath her.

"Now, Miss, I'll teach you to come interfering with business that's none o' yourn. What, you thought you'd come after me, did yer? because you was tired o' waitin' for me to come after you again, I suppose."

"What is that you're carryin' in your belt?" she demanded calmly. A handle was seen sticking up under his fisherman's blouse. "You believe its safer to climb the rocks with a butcher's knife in your pocket, do you? You think in case of an accident it would make you fall a bit softer, hey?"

"It don't matter to you what I've got in my pocket," he rejoined, but his tone was uncertain. "I brought it to cut the tackle—we've got a job of mending to do."

"I don't know whether you think me an idiot," she replied; "but if you want me to believe your stories you'd better invent 'em more reasonable. Now, Pierre, this is what you've got to do before you leave this spot. You've got to promise me solemnly not to go near Daddy, nor threaten him as you once threatened me on a day you may remember, nor try to intimidate him into takin' you back. Neither down in the cove, nor anything else: neither now, nor at any other time."

Her girlish figure as she stood with one arm clasping the rock beside her, looked a slight enough obstacle in the path.

"Intimidate him! A parcel o' rubbish; who's goin' to intimidate him as you call it. Get out o' the way, and don't go meddling in men's concerns that you know nothing about."

He seized her wrist roughly, and with her precarious footing the position was dangerous enough: but she clung with her other arm like a limpit to the rock. He attempted to dislodge her, when she suddenly turned and fled back on her own accord. He hastened after her, and it was not till he had gone some yards that, putting his hand to his belt, he found that the knife had gone.

"The jade," he muttered, "she did it on purpose," and even with his hatred and malice was mingled a gleam of admiration at the cleverness that had outwitted him. He hurried on towards the cliff path, but the sunset light was already fading into dusk, and he had to choose his footing more carefully. When he reached the point where the rope began, Marie had already gone down and was leaning on the rock beside her father. Had he been near he might have noticed a strange expression in her eyes, as she furtively watched the precipitous descent. The purple shadows now filled both sky and sea, and the island opposite reared its grand outline solemnly in the twilight depths, as though sitting in eternal judgment on the transient ways of men. The evening star shone softly above the sea. Suddenly a crash, followed by one sharp cry, was heard; then all was still.

"Good God! That's some one fallen down the path—why don't you go and see, child?" but Marie seemed as if she could not stir. Old André slowly dragged himself on to his feet, and took her arm, and they went together. At the foot of the path they found the body of Pierre, dead, his head having struck against a rock.

"He must have missed his footing in the dark," said André, when they had rowed round to the fishing village to carry the news, and the solitary constable had bustled forth, and was endeavouring to collect information about the accident from the only two witnesses, of whom the girl seemed to have lost the power of speech.

"He must have missed his footing in the dark; and then the rope broke with his weight and the clutch he give it. It lies there all loose on the ground."

"It shouldn't have broken," said the constable. "But I always did say we'd ought to have an iron chain down there."

Chapter III.

Fifty years had passed, with all their seasons' changes, and the changing life of nature both by land and sea, and had made as little impression on the island as the ceaseless dashing of the waves against its coast. The cliffs, the caves and the sea-beaten boulders were the same; the colours of the bracken on the September hills, and of the sea anemones in their green, pellucid pools, were the same, and the fishermen's path down to the cove was the same. No iron chain had been put there, but the rope had never broken again.

A violent south-west gale was blowing, driving scud and sea-foam before it, while ever new armies of rain-clouds advanced threateningly across the shadowy waters—mighty, moving mists, whose grey-winged squadrons, swift and irresistible, enveloped and almost blotted from sight the little rock-bound island, against which the forces of nature seemed to be for ever spending themselves in vain. From time to time through a gap in the shifting cloud-ranks there shone a sudden dazzling gleam of sunlight on the white crests of the sea-horses far away.

The good French pastor, who struggled to discharge the offices of religion in that impoverished and for the most part socially abandoned spot, had just allowed himself to be persuaded by his wife that it was unnecessary to visit his sick parishioner at the other end of the island that afternoon, when a loud rat-tat was heard in the midst of a shriek of wind, through a grudged inch of open door-way. The hurricane burst into the house while a dripping, breathless girl panted forth her message, that "old Marie" had been suddenly taken bad, and was dying, and wanted but one thing in the world, to see the Vicar.

"I wonder what it is she has got to say," said the Vicar, as his wife buttoned his mackintosh up to his throat. "I always did think there was something strange about old Marie."

A mile of bitter, breathless battling with the storm, then a close cottage-room, with rain-flooded floor, the one small window carefully darkened, and on a pillow in the furthest corner, shaded by heavy bed-curtains, a wrinkled old woman's face, pinched and colourless, on which the hand of Death lay visibly.

But in the eagerness with which she signed to the pastor to come close, and in the keen glance she cast round the room to see that no one else was near, the vigour of life still asserted itself.