The salt Sark air is uplifting at all times. The sea-water has a crisp effervescence of its own which tones and braces mind and body alike. Add to these the wonder of Margaret\'s unexpected presence there and, if the gift of large imagination be yours, you may possibly arrive—within a hundred miles or so—of the state of John Graeme\'s feelings as he raced up that path and bounded up the stairs of the Red House four at a time.

He looked out of the wide-open window across the fields, while the dogs, as usual, took the opportunity of appeasing their thirst at his water-jug,—for water lies at the bottom of deep cool wells in Sark, and sensible dogs take their chances when they offer.

Was this the room he had left an hour ago in the fresh of the dawn—a man whose gray future was just beginning to lift its bruised head out of the shadows?

Were those gleaming emerald fields the dim wastes he had sped across with his dumb companion, feeling as friendly towards him as towards anything on earth?

Were those trees over there, with the glow of spring-gold in their tender green leaves, the gloomy guardians of the churchyard where ghosts walked of a night?

Was that streak of blue away beyond the uplands, with the purple film along its rim, only the sea and a hint of Jersey, or was it a glimpse of heaven?

Was he, in very truth, that John Graeme who, for thirty days past, had been striving with all his might to root the thought of Margaret Brandt out of his life—and succeeding not at all?

It was the face of a stranger—a stranger with new joy of life in his sparkling eyes—that looked back at him out of the glass, as he plied his brushes, and tied his neck-tie with a careful assiduity to which the John Graeme of the past thirty ............