CHAP.

  1. [THE 'FAIR RETURN']
  2. [GARTH HOUSE]
  3. [A LETTER FROM KENSINGTON]
  4. [ROGER TREVANNION]
  5. ['MY LITTLE NIECE']
  6. [A LADY IN WAITING]
  7. [SIMONE LEBLANC]
  8. [HAUNTED COVE]
  9. [A MORNING VISIT]
  10. [FOREBODING]
  11. [AUNT AND NIECE]
  12. [CHARITY'S LETTER]
  13. [THE ESCORT]
  14. [A HALT ON THE ROAD]
  15. [IN THE HARNESS ROOM]
  16. [EXETER]
  17. [AN EAST WINDOW]
  18. [THE SIGNAL]
  19. [THE GAOL YARD]
  20. [ZACCHARY'S QUEST]
  21. [DAWN]
  22. [THE ROAD TO THE WEST]
  23. [HOME]
  24. [ELISE PASSES OUT]
  25. [A FAMILY PARTY]
  26. ['SUMER IS A-COMEN IN']

CHAPTER I

THE FAIR RETURN

Spring had come to the West Country, a joyous spring laden with soft airs and odours of distant flowering lands, and filling the hearts of men with a restless delight. It seemed impossible not to be happy, with a blue sky flecked by little clouds running down to meet a blue sea, the hedgerows gleaming with blackthorn, and the pink tips of the beeches shining in the sun. Children were out in the copses, picking primroses; farmers counted their lambs in the pasture, and down in the harbour sailor boys watched the rising tide and were all impatience to be aboard.

On the highest point of a headland to the west of the village of Garth a youth was sitting, staring out on the Channel. A jutting ledge of rock, with a tall boulder at its back, formed a natural chair of stone, and from it the green sward dipped steeply to the cliff. The boy's long, loosely set limbs, showing thin under the wrinkles of his knee breeches, sprawled restlessly across the rocky seat; the heels of his riding boots tore at the grass. In his fixed, seaward gaze there was nothing of the expectancy and hope that marked the faces of the youths in the harbour below. His eyes, that could be so merry, with gold lights dancing in the brown, were sad and dark under the black lashes, and his mouth, losing its shape of laughter, was set in hard lines. The world might be full of glamour, but 'twas not for him; fortune and the hour were all awry; he was out of tune with the spring. And when from the cobbled streets below rose the sound of sailors singing, mingled with the noises which to a practised ear betokened tide and time, the boy's black head dropped, and with a smothered word he set his knees together and drew his hands across his ears.

Sitting there he was unaware of the approach of light footsteps along a narrow path that wound over the headland, and only when a hand tapped his shoulder did he raise his head.

'Marion!' he said, springing to his feet, a smile banishing his dark looks; 'where have you been all this time?'

The brown eyes, now all alight, met a pair of steady grey ones whose owner dropped him a mock curtsey, then stood looking at him from head to foot and back again.

'You are a most uncomfortable person to know, Roger,' she said. 'I cannot keep the same impression of you two months together. You are inches taller than when I saw you last; your shoulders bid fair to burst your jacket seams; your eyebrows are several degrees blacker. I wish you would determine what length you are going to be, and abide by it.'