“No sign yet?”  
“No sign.” Margot’s tone was almost hopeless. Day after day, many times each day, she had climbed the pine-tree flagstaff and peered into the distance. Not once had anything been visible, save that wide stretch of forest and the shining lake.
 
“Suppose you cross again, to old Joe’s. He might be back by this time. I’ll fix you a bite of dinner, and you better. Maybe——”
 
The girl shook her head and clasped her arms about old Angelique’s neck. Then the long repressed grief burst in dry that shook them both, and pierced the housekeeper’s faithful heart with a pain beyond endurance.
 
[Pg 202]
 
“Pst! Pouf! , sweetheart, hush! ’Tis . A few days more and the master will be well. A few days more and Pierre will come—— Ah! but I had my hands about his ears this minute! That would teach him, yes, to turn his back on duty, him. The ! Well, what the Lord sends the body must bear.”
 
Margot lifted her head, shook back her hair, and smiled . The veriest ghost of her old smile, it was, yet even such a delight to the other’s eyes.
 
“Good. That’s right. Rouse up. There’s a wing of a in the cupboard, left from the master’s broth——”
 
“Angelique, he didn’t touch it, to-day. Not even touch it.”
 
“’Tis nought. When the fever is on the appetite is gone. Will be all right once that is over.”
 
“But, will it ever be over? Day after day, just the same. Always that tossing to and fro, the queer, talk, the growing [Pg 203]thinner—all of the dreadful signs of how he suffers. Angelique, if I could bear it for him! I am so young and strong and worth nothing to this world while he’s so wise and good. Everybody who ever knew him must be the better for Uncle Hughie.”
 
“’Tis truth. For that, the good Lord will spare him to us. Of that be sure.”
 
“But I pray and pray and pray, and there comes no answer. He is never any better. You know that. You can’t deny it. Always before when I have prayed the answer has come swift and sure, but now——”
 
“Take care, Margot. ’Tis not for us to judge the Lord’s strange ways. Else were not you and me and the master shut up alone on this island, with no doctor near, and only our two selves to keep the dumb things in comfort, though, as for dumbness, hark yonder beast!”
 
“Reynard! Oh! I forgot. I shut him up because he would hang about the house and [Pg 204]watch your poor chickens. If he’d stay in his own forest now, I would be so glad. Yet I love him——”
 
“Aye, and he loves you. Be thankful. Even a beastie’s love is of God’s sending. Go feed him. Here. The wing you’ll not eat yourself.”
 
There were dark days now on the once sunny island of peace.
 
That day when Mr. Dutton had said: “Your father is still alive,” seemed now to Margot, looking back, as one of such experiences as change a whole life. Up till that morning she had been a thoughtless, unreflecting child, but the of those fateful words altered everything.
 
, unbelief of what her ears told her, indignation that she had been so long deceived—as she put it—were swiftly followed by a dreadful fear. Even while he , the woodlander’s figure swayed and trembled, the hoe-handle on which he rested wavered and fell, and he, too, would have fallen had not [Pg 205]the girl’s arms caught and eased his sudden sinking in the he had worked. Her cry of alarm had reached Angelique, always alert for trouble and then more than ever, and had brought her swiftly to the field. Between them they had carried the now unconscious man within and laid him on his bed. He had never risen from it since; nor, in her heart, did Angelique believe he ever would, though she so asserted to the contrary before Margot.
 
“We have changed places, Angelique, dear,” the child often said. “It used to be you who was always and looking for trouble. Now you see only brightness.”
 
“Well, good sooth. ’Tis a long lane has no turnin’, and better late nor never. Sometimes ’tis well to say ‘stay good trouble lest worser comes,’ eh? But things’ll mend. They must. Now, run and climb the tree. It might be this ver’ minute that , Pierre, was on his way across the lake. Pouf! But he’ll stir his lazy bones, once he touches this [Pg 206]shore! Yes, yes, indeed. Run and hail him, maybe.”
 
So Margot had gone, again and again, and had returned to sit beside her uncle’s bed, anxious and .
 
Often, also, she had paddled across the narrows and made her way swiftly to a little clearing on her uncle’s land, where, among giant trees, old Joseph Wills, the Indian guide and faithful friend of all on Peace Island, made one of his homes. Once Mr. Dutton had nursed this red man through a dangerous illness, and had kept hi............