He worked hard all day, keeping a wary outlook for any stray fishermen.

First he culled a great heap of the thin wiry grass which seemed the chief product of his rock, and spread it also to dry for a couch.  There was no bracken for bedding, no gorse for firing.  The grass would supply the place of the one, the broken boat the other.

Then he made good all the holes in his walls and roof, except one in the latter for the escape of the smoke, and built a solid wall of the tufted cushions round the seaward side of his doorway, as a screen against his light being seen, and as a protection from the south-west wind if it should blow up strong in the night.

He found it very strange to be toiling on these elemental matters, with never a soul to speak to.  He felt like a castaway on a desert island, with the additional oddness of knowing himself to be within reach of his kind, yet debarred from any communication with them on pain, possibly, of death.

At times he felt like a condemned criminal, yet knew that he had done no wrong, and that it was only the mistaken justice of a simple people that wanted blood for blood, and was not over-heedful as to whose blood so long as its own sense of justice was satisfied.

But, he kept saying to himself, things might have been worse with him, very much worse, but for Nance and Bernel.  And before long, any day, the matter might be cleared up and himself reinstated in the opinion of the Sark men.

Even that would leave much to be desired, but possibly, he thought, if they found they had sorely misjudged him in this matter, they might realize that they had done so in other matters also, and that he had only been striving to do his duty as he saw it.

And then, wherever else his thoughts led him, there was always Nance, and the thought of Nance always set his heart aglow and braced him to patient endurance and hope.

He retraced, again and again, all the ways they had travelled together in these later days, recalled her every word and look, felt again the trembling of her hand—­for him—­on the Coupee, heard again the tremors of her voice as she urged him to safety.  And those sweet ingenuous kisses she had given him!  Yes, indeed, he had much to be grateful for, if some things to cavil at, in fortune’s dealings.

But, behind all his fair white thought of Nance, was always the black background of the whole circumstances of the case, and the grim fact of Tom Hamon’s death, and he pondered this last with knitted brows from every point of view, and strove in vain for a gleam of light on the darkness.

Could the Doctor be mistaken, and was Tom’s death the simple result of his fall over the Coupee?  The Doctor’s pronouncement, however, seemed to leave no loophole of hope there.

If not, then who had killed Tom, and why?

He could think of no one.  He could imagine no reason for it.