“O Martin!” I said, “let us get out, and send the carriage back, and walk up with them to the village.”

“And my wife’s luggage?” he answered, “and all the toys and presents she has brought from Paris?”

It was true that the carriage was inconveniently full of parcels, for I do not think that I had forgotten one of Monsieur Laurentie’s people.  But it would not be possible to ride among them, while they were walking.

“Every man will carry something,” I said.  “Martin, I must get out.”

It was Monsieur Laurentie who opened the carriage-door for me; but the people did not give him time for a ceremonious salutation.  They thronged about us with vivats as hearty as an English hurrah.

“All the world is here to meet us, monsieur,” I said.

“Madame, I have also the honor of presenting to you two strangers from England,” answered Monsieur Laurentie, while the people fell back to make way for them.  Jack and Minima! both wild with delight.  We learned afterward, as we marched up the valley to Ville-en-bois, that Dr. Senior had taken Jack’s place in Brook Street, and insisted upon him and Minima giving us this surprise.  Our procession, headed by the drum, the fife, and the violin, passed through the village street, from every window of which a little flag fluttered gayly, and stopped before the presbytery, where Monsieur Laurentie dismissed it, after a last vivat.

The next stage of our homeward journey was made in Monsieur Laurentie’s char a bancs, from Ville-en-bois to Granville—­Jack and Minima had returned direct to England, but we were to visit Guernsey on the way.  Captain Carey and Julia made it a point that we should go to see them, and their baby, before settling down in our London home.  Martin was welcomed with almost as much enthusiasm in St. Peter-Port as I had been in little Ville-en-bois.

From our room in Captain Carey’s house I could look at Sark lying along the sea, with a belt of foam encircling it.  At times, early in the morning, or when the sunset light fell upon it, I could distinguish the old windmill, and the church breaking the level line of the summit; and I could even see the brow of the knoll behind Tardifs cottage.  But day after day the sea between us was rough, and the westerly breeze blew across the Atlantic, driving the waves before it.  There was no steamer going across, and Captain Carey’s yacht could not brave the winds.  I began to be afraid that Martin and I would not visit the place, which of all others in this half of the world was dearest to me.

“To-morrow,” said Martin one night, after scanning the sunset, the sky, and the storm-glass, “if you can be up at five o’clock, we will cross to Sark.”