And when the tide was low and the harbour empty, Punch knew it was Les Laches almost before Man's face had turned that way, and off he went at a gallop, and Scamp came tearing back with expostulatory yelps, and got in Punch's way and was rolled head over heels, but always came right side up at the fourth turn and rushed on without even a remonstrance, for that was a very small price to pay for the exalted companionship of Punch and Man. So, past La Peignerie and La Forge, with the thin blue smoke of gorse fires floating down from every dumpy chimney and adding a flavour to the sweetest air in the world,--with a morning greeting from everyone they met--over the heights and down the zigzag path to the sloping ledges, and in they went, all three, into the clearest and crispest water in the world, water that tingled and sparkled, full charged with life and energy. Then shivers and shakes, and hasty play with a towel, and they were racing back across the heights to breakfast and the passing of another day, of which the greatest charm had passed already with that plunge into the life-giving sea. If you are inclined to think that I enlarge too much on these two friends of his, let me remind you that a man is known by the company he keeps, and these two were Graeme's sole companions for many a day--those first dark days in the sunny little isle, when all human companionship would have been abhorrent to him. In their company he found himself again. Their friendship weaned him by degrees from the jaundiced view of life which Margaret's dereliction had induced. They drew him, in time, from his brooding melancholy, and through the upbuilding of the body restored him to a quieter mind. Let no man despise the help of a dog, for there are times when the friendship of a dog is more sufferable, and of more avail, and far more comforting, than that of any ordinary human being. PART THE FOURTH I It was just two days before the end of Graeme's fourth week in Sark. His spirits were rising to the requirements of his work, and he was looking forward with quite novel enjoyment to a steady spell of writing, when his hostess startled him, as she cleared away his breakfast, by saying-- "It iss the day after to-morrow you will be going?" "Eh? What? Going? No, I'm not going, Mrs. Carre. What made you think I was going? Why, I've only just come." His landlady put down the dishes on the table again as a concrete expression of surprise, put her hands on her hips by way of taking grip of herself, and stared at him. "You are not going? Noh? But it wass just for the month I thought you kem." "Not at all. I may stop two months, three months,--all my life perhaps. Won't you let me live and die here if I want to?"