"They--who?" said Stair, sleepily. For warm pebbles, warm sands, the lee of a rock and the gentle lap of a sheltered sea make for drowsiness. "Well," said Patsy, "Eben and Whitefoot there--they don't care a straw about me." "Whitefoot would defend you with his life," put in Stair, sitting up. "Yes, because you tell him," said Patsy, pulling discontentedly at a blade of grass, "and as for Eben--he simply cannot keep from singing your praises!" Stair laughed, gaily for him. He did not often laugh aloud. "Patsy," he answered, "how many have loved you--Princes and Princesses, men and women in another world than mine? Now, none of these love me--and strange as it may seem, I am not disquieted about the matter." "I daresay not," snapped Patsy, who this morning for some reason was easily irritated, "but they are not here. Eben and Whitefoot are, and they go about worshipping you. Now, if you expect me to do the same, you are mistaken!" "I am not expecting anything of the sort," said Stair patiently, looking past Patsy, away out to sea to the poised top of Snaefell lording it above the low-lying channel mists. "Well then you ought!" cried Patsy, and turning on her heel she sped to the house to keep from crying, she did not in the least know why. And when Stair followed her to ask what was the matter, it stood to reason that he was met by silence and a locked door. If he had had more experience he would have remained where he was and let Patsy find her way back of her own accord. One morning, a week or two after, Patsy had gone out with her books and Stair was getting ready to follow her to the seaward looking side of the Isle, when Eben called him to the window of the kitchen which overlooked the long ridge of sand, shingle, and razor-like mussel shells which in the deeps of the ebb, constituted a practicable pathway across to the mainland. For half-a-dozen tides each month, three in the middle of each neap, unless there were heavy winds from the south-west, Isle Rathan became a tidal island, and the ridge could be crossed on foot by those who made haste. This was not, however, often attempted, for the tides and currents were exceedingly tricky in these parts. Eben pointed with his finger to a faint horizontal ridge on the mainland. "Do you see anything there, sir?" he asked. "No," said Stair, anxious to be off to Patsy, "some shepherds on the mainland have been making a new sheep-fold, I suppose." "A sheep-fold is mostly round, sir," said Eben, "and if you will notice there are two turf dykes one behind the other. I don't like that. Besides, have you seen anybody working there? I have not. And would herds cover their work so neatly with turf? From here it might be twenty years old--only I know it was not there when I passed that way down to the Orraland Point where I began to swim out." "I see you have an idea," said Stair, "out with it! Tell me what you think!"