number of suchlike mistakes.  After a week he hired the cottage in which he now lives, bought his boat, leased from the steward the patch of ground in Dolphin Town, and set about building his house.  He undertook the work, I am sure, for pure employment and distraction.  He picked up the granite stones, fitted them together, panelled them, made the floors from the deck of a brigantine which came ashore on Annet, pegged down the thatch roof—­in a word, he built the house from first to last with his own hands and he took fifteen months over the business, during which time he did not exchange a single word with Mrs. Lovyes, nor anything more than a short ‘Good-day’ with Mr. John.  He worked, however, with no great regularity.  For while now he laboured in a feverish haste, now he would sit a whole day idle on the headlands; or, again, he would of a sudden throw down his tools as though the work overtaxed him, and, leaping into his boat, set all sail and run with the wind.  All that night you might see him sailing in the moonlight, and he would come home in the flush of the dawn.

“After he had built the house, he furnished it, crossing for that purpose backwards and forwards between Tresco and St. Mary’s.  I remember that one day he brought back with him a large chest, and I offered to lend him a hand in carrying it.  But he hoisted it on his back and took it no farther than the cottage in which he lived, where it remained locked with a padlock.

“Towards Christmas-time, then, the house was ready, but to our surprise he did not move into it.  He seemed, indeed, of a sudden, to have lost all liking for it, and whether it was that he had no longer any work upon his hands, he took to following Mrs. Lovyes about, but in a way that was unnoticeable unless you had other reasons to suspect that his thoughts were following her.

“His conduct in this respect was particularly brought home to me on Christmas Day.  The afternoon was warm and sunny, and I walked over the hill at Merchant’s Point, meaning to bathe in the little sequestered bay beyond.  From the top of the hill I saw Mrs. Lovyes walking along the strip of beach alone, and as I descended the hill-side, which is very deep in fern and heather, I came plump upon Jarvis Grudge, stretched full-length on the ground.  He was watching Mrs. Lovyes with so greedy a concentration of his senses that he did not remark my approach.  I asked him when he meant to enter his new house.

“‘I do not know that I ever shall,’ he replied.

“‘Then why did you build it?’ I asked.

“‘Because I was a fool!’ and then he burst out in a passionate whisper.  ’But a fool I was to stay here, and a fool’s trick it was to build that house!’ He shook his fist in its direction.  ’Call it Grudge’s Folly, and there’s the name for it!’ and with that he turned him again to spying upon Mrs. Lovyes.

“After a while he spoke again, but slowly and with his eyes fixed upon the figure moving upon the beach.