It was impossible to question the validity of this evidence, and, indeed, Lady Davidstow had no desire to do so. For herself, she believed implicitly in the fact of life everlasting, without which the whole creation of God, with its pains and its agonies and its yearning and its love, becomes the cruellest of all sorry jests concocted by the omnipotent power of a mind infinitely brutal and cynical, who tortures the puppets He has created with unutterable anguish, or ravishes their souls with a joy as meaningless as dreams. Well she remembered Martin's cutting the circle on the pine-tree, but what its significance was he had never told her. But now, five years after his death, he had told it, she could not doubt, to the brother who had no normal remembrance of him. There they were, the little pathetic tokens of his childish secrecy, a pencil, a piece of chocolate, a photograph, and, above all, the well-formed, upright handwriting identical with that of the message traced on the last page of Archie's unsent letter. How it happened, what was the strange mechanism that fashioned by material means this mysterious communication between the living and the dead she had no idea, but of its having happened she had no doubt. She turned these relics over, she kissed the handwriting so long buried, and tears of tender amazement rose in her eyes. "Oh Archie, my darling," she said. "You lucky boy!" "Aren't I?" said Archie. "But does Martin never write to you?" "No, dear; I suppose he cannot." "And why is he so particularly here?" demanded Archie. She paused a moment. "He died here," she said. "In this house?" asked he. "Which room?" "Blessington's." Archie gave a great sigh. "Oh, mummy, do let me have that room instead of mine!" he said. _BOOK II_ CHAPTER V Archie was precariously perched on the side of his little Una-rigged, red-sailed boat, looking with dancing blue eyes at the rocky coast all smothered in billows and sunlit spray some quarter of a mile ahead, and wondering if he would be able to make the harbour of Silorno on this tack. He wondered also what was the best thing to do if he could not. There seemed to be two alternatives, the one to beat out to sea again and come in on another tack, the other to run before the wind to the head of the bay, away to the right, where he knew there was a sandy beach, tumble himself out as best he might, and, he was afraid, see his beloved _Amphitrite_ being pounded to bits by the rollers; for, with all his optimism, he could not picture himself hauling her up out of harm's way. But even this seemed preferable to the other alternative, for to beat out again in such a sea seemed really a challenge to the elements to swamp him, in which case he was like to lose the _Amphitrite_ and his own life as well.