With the coming of Eben the Spy to Isle Rathan a new life began there. At first Patsy was filled with indignation at the trust Stair placed in him. She knew that he had been with Uncle Julian and Stair in the Bothy of Blairmore. She had heard the tale of the test--the test of life or death. But somehow, because she had not seen it--because she had not been with the ex-spy day after day, she could not believe in the reality of his repentance. His deep-rooted admiration for Stair remained in her eyes peculiarly suspect. He seemed to be presuming too much. If she, to whom Stair belonged by right of purchase at so great a price, did not manifest her feelings--what right had he? Of course he had a purpose to serve, and that purpose was to betray them. How else should he have guessed about the island, and why should he come swimming out and interrupting their picnic like that? Still there was a pleasant side to the matter. The cows were milked, the meals prepared. Fresh water was brought to every chamber by this man who never showed his face outside the house during the day. Patsy and Stair had nothing to do but to stray from one safe cove to another on the seaward side all through these long days, and so, resentment falling away, by and by Patsy fell into talk with Eben. He called her "madame," and rarely concluded a sentence without a reference to "Your husband, madame!" This Patsy thought a great liberty. What could he know about the matter? He had not seen Saunders Duff's registers, and of a certainty Godfrey McCulloch had not spoken. Still, she finished by liking to hear him say the words, and often left the real Stair idly tossing stones into the water, in order to go into the cool kitchen of Tower Rathan, to sit on one of the ancient oaken chests, a row of which ran round the walls, and hear tales of the dare-devil Stair, and especially to listen for the respectful repetition of her favourite phrase, "Your husband, madame!" She loved to hear how her husband (she could say the word to herself now sometimes) had accepted the outcast and had treated him like a man when he was trodden under foot. She could not listen often enough to the history of the restitution of the money and jewels with which Eben had ridden away from the White Loch. Stair had insisted on that, though he had no reason to love the Duke of Lyonesse. Then she would go back and lo! there--prone on the sand, his rough muzzle on Stair's knees, his big brown eyes under shaggy bristles of eyebrow, gazing up into his master's face, lay Whitefoot. Only, such was the fineness of his breeding and the delicacy of his sheep-dog instinct, that he rose instantly when he heard Patsy's returning footsteps, and took himself out of the way. He worshipped none the less, only at a greater distance. Patsy's was now the first right. "Why do they love you so much, Stair?" said Patsy abruptly, as she sat down beside him after one of these kitchen visits.