“They won’t stop for me,” he muttered, looking at the half-dozen krises that were visible.

Britt smoothed the troubled waters with astonishing ease; the servants returned to their duties, but not without grumbling and no end of savage glances, all of which were levelled at the luckless Deppingham.

“By Jove, you’ll see, sooner or later,” he protested, like the schoolboy, almost ready to hope that the servants would bear him out by doling out ample quantities of strychnine that very night.

“Why poison?” demanded Britt.  “They’ve got knives and guns, haven’t they?”

“My dear man, that would put them to no end of trouble, cleaning up after us,” said Deppingham, loftily.

The next day the horses were brought in from the valley, and the traps were put to immediate use.  A half-dozen excursions were planned by the now friendly beneficiaries; life on the island, aside from certain legal restraints, began to take on the colour of a real holiday.

Two lawyers, each clever in his own way, were watching every move with the faithfulness of brooding hens.  Both realised, of course, that the great fight would take place in England; they were simply active as outposts in the battle of wits.  They posed amiably as common allies in the fight to keep the islanders from securing a single point of vantage during the year.

“If they hadn’t been in such a hurry to get married,” Britt would lament.

“Do you know, I don’t believe a man should marry before he’s thirty, a woman twenty-six,” Saunders would observe in return.

“You’re right, Saunders.  I agree with you.  I was married twice before I was thirty,” reflected Britt on one occasion.

“Ah,” sympathised Saunders.  “You left a wife at home, then?”

“Two of ’em,” said Britt, puffing dreamily.  “But they are other men’s wives now.”  Saunders was half an hour grasping the fact that Britt had been twice divorced.

Meanwhile, it may be well to depict the situation from the enemy’s point of view—­the enemy being the islanders as a unit.  They were prepared to abide by the terms of the will so long as it remained clear to them that fair treatment came from the opposing interests.  Rasula, the Aratat lawyer, in mass meeting, had discussed the document.  They understood its requirements and its restrictions; they knew, by this time, that there was small chance of the original beneficiaries coming into the property under the provisions.  Moreover, they knew that a bitter effort would be made to break this remarkable instrument in the English courts.  Their attitude, in consequence, toward the grandchildren of their former lords was inimical, to say the least.