Apparently, however, the sphinx of Far End was compounded of even more adamantine substance than his feminine prototype, for he exhibited a mulish aversion to budging an inch—­much less galloping—­in the direction Sara had indicated as desirable.

The two quarreled vehemently over the matter, and a glacial atmosphere of hostility prevailed between them during the period of Black Brady’s incarceration.

Garth, undeniably the victor, was the first to open peace negotiations, and a few days subsequent to Brady’s release from prison, he waylaid Sara in the town.

She was preoccupied with numerous small, unnecessary commissions to be executed for Mrs. Selwyn at half-a-dozen different shops, and she would have passed him by with a frosty little bow had he not halted in front of her and deliberately held out his hand.

“Good-morning!” he said, blithely disregarding the coolness of his reception.  “Am I still in disgrace?  Brady’s been restored to the bosom of his family for at least five days now, you know.”

Overhead, the sun was shining gloriously in an azure sky flecked with little bunchy white clouds like floating pieces of cotton-wool, while an April breeze, fragrant of budding leaf and blossom, rollicked up the street.  It seemed almost as though the frolicsome atmosphere of spring had permeated even the shell of the hermit and got into his system, for there was something incorrigibly boyish and youthful about him this morning.  His cheerful smile was infectious.

“Can’t I be restored, too?” he asked

“Restored to what?” asked Sara, trying to resist the contagion of his good humour.

“Oh, well”—­a faint shadow dimmed the sparkle in his eyes—­“to the same old place I held before our squabble over Brady—­just friends, Sara.”

For a moment she hesitated.  He had pitted his will against hers and won, hands down, and she felt distinctly resentful.  But she knew that in a strange, unforeseen way their quarrel had hurt her inexplicably.  She had hated meeting the cool, aloof expression of his eyes, and now, urged by some emotion of which she was, as yet, only dimly conscious, she capitulated.

“That’s good,” he said contentedly.  “And you might just as well give in now as later,” he added, smiling.

“All the same,” she protested, “you’re a bully.”

“I know I am—­I glory in it!  But now, just to show that you really do mean to be friends again, will you let me row you across to Devil’s Hood Island this afternoon?  You told me once that you wanted to go there.”

Sara considered the proposition for a moment, then nodded consent.

“Yes, I’ll come,” she said, “I should like to.”

Devil’s Hood Island was a chip off the mainland which had managed to keep its head above water when the gradually encroaching sea had stolen yet another mile from the coast.  Sandy dunes, patched here and there with clumps of coarse, straggling rushes, sloped upward from the rock-strewn shore to a big crag that crowned its further side—­a curious natural formation which had given the island its name.