It was I--strangely fated to discover so many of the links in this wonderfully twined chain of Margarita's life--who stumbled by the merest chance on the last one really needed to complete the story. Zealous for the perfection of our Island, I selected a deep gully, filled with heavy boughs and loose unsightly rocks, as the next point for improvement, and bespoke the services of Caliban for the purpose. Greatly to my surprise, for he was attached to me, and always showed pleasure at rowing me over for my visits, he refused point blank to help me and even tried, in a series of clumsy ruses, to start me at work elsewhere. Vexed, but quite unsuspicious, I set to work by myself at pulling off the upper boughs, trusting to shame him into helping me with the stones, which seemed to have been tossed there in a sort of midden. When he found that I was persistent in my plan, he sat down at the edge of the gully, buried his face in his clumsy hands and wept silently, shuddering at every bough I lifted. Greatly interested now, I called Roger, and we worked together, assisted by the good-natured Italian retained now as gardener and assistant boatman (his name was Rafaello, and he was a not-too-unhappy bachelor, for, as he said, a girl who would run off with a man's rival a week before the wedding would have made but a doubtful wife for the most patient of husbands!) As we neared the bottom of the gully Caliban grew more and more excited: now he would peer in fearfully, now run off a few yards, but he could never get very far away, for great as was his terror and sorrow, curiosity was stronger and he must be near, it seemed, at all costs. [Illustration: AH, FAITHFUL CALIBAN, WHAT HOURS OF TERRIBLE TUITION MADE THY TASK CLEAR TO THEE!] Suddenly, as the last rotting bough was lifted from one end of the gully, my eye was caught by a series of stones wonderfully matched in size, eight or ten of them arranged in a sort of rough cross, and when with a quick thrill of apprehension I pushed aside the withered pine tree that covered the rest of the stones, the foot of the cross elongated, and the symbol of Calvary was seen to extend over a slightly raised oblong mound of earth. There was no mistaking that shape nor those dimensions; whoever has heard the rattle of that last remorseless handful and struggled with that almost nauseating rebellion at the sight of the raw clods, so unsightly in the smooth, peaceful green, knows that mound for what it is, and we knew this. Silently we cleared away the rest, and then the grave I had discerned fell into its true and illuminating relation to two other and evidently older crosses--at the feet of both and at right angles to them. In her death as in her life that gaunt, austere Hester was faithful, and like the stone hound at the ancient knight's bier she guarded her master's last sleep.