Mrs. Treacher turned slowly again to Mr. Pope, whose face (since this was the first he had heard of any strange lady) expressed no small astonishment. "Poor man!" she murmured, sympathetically, "did they really go so far as all that?" "I assure you--" began Mrs. Pope stammering. "Oh, go your ways and take 'em home!" cut in Mrs. Treacher. "I'm a friend to my sex in most matters; but to come askin' me to back up such a tale as that, and for a shillin'!" She turned her palm over and let the coin drop on the soil at her feet. But here unhappily, at the height of Mrs. Treacher's indignation, a sneeze sounded from a bush across the patch of garden; and the eyes of her visitors, attracted by the sound, rested on an object which Mrs. Treacher, by interposition of her shoulders, had been doing her best to hide--a scarecrow standing unashamed in the midst of the garrison potato patch--a scarecrow in a flaunting waistcoat of scarlet, green, and yellow! "My antimacassar!" gasped Miss Gabriel. "The Lord Pro--" Mr. Pope checked the exclamation midway. "You will excuse me, ma'am. I was referring to the lower part of the figure." "Was ever such ingratitude?" "It is worse, ma'am--ten times worse. You may call it sacrilege." CHAPTER XV BREFAR CHURCH "It was all my fault," confessed Vashti. "I was thinking so," said the Commandant, drily. "It had not occurred to me that Archelaus and the Treachers were acting on their own initiative." Vashti laughed, and her laugh rippled over the waves to meet the sunset gold. They had taken boat beneath the Keg of Butter Battery, and were sailing for Saaron with a light breeze on their quarter. Evening and Sabbath calm held the sky from its pale yellow verges up to the zenith across which a few stray gulls were homing. From Garland Town, from St. Ann's, from Brefar ahead of them, came wafted the sound of bells, far and faint, ringing to church, and the murmuring water in the boat's wake seemed to take up Vashti's laugh and echo it reproachfully, as she checked herself with a glance at her companion's face, which also was reproachful and sternly set, but with a slight twitch at the corners of the mouth to betray it. "Forgive me!" she pleaded, but her voice, too, betrayed her. "You are not penitent in the least." "As you are only pretending to be angry. Remember that I belong to the 'profession,' and no amateur acting can impose on me." "You will admit that you have behaved abominably." The Commandant conceded a smile. "Oh, abominably!"