“Perhaps Mr. Pixley could hardly help himself,” said Miss Penny, sympathising somewhat with the awkwardness of his position.

“That is so,” he said, with a grateful glance at her.  “You see, the governor is crazy wild over this matter.  It was only Sunday night he heard of it.  A friend of young Greatorex wrote him that he’d heard your banns put up, and Greatorex congratulated the governor after church, and the governor nearly had a fit.  He came over to my place like a whirlwind and practically ordered me to come across instanter and stop it.  I may say,” he said, looking at Margaret, “I tried to reason with him.  I told him he must know that if you’d gone that length I was out of it, and nothing he could do would alter matters.  But he would not hear a word.  He simply raved until I promised to come over by first boat and see what could be done.”

“You’ve only done your duty, Mr. Pixley,” said Miss Penny.  “But you simply can’t stop it, so is it any good making any trouble?  Put it on the highest grounds.  You have had warmer feelings for Meg than she could reciprocate.  You can possibly make some disturbance at her wedding, which would be painful to her and utterly useless to yourself.  Is it worth while?”

“No, I’m dem—­er—­hanged if it is!  I see I can do no good, and I’ll be hammered if I’ll play dog in the manger, even to oblige the governor.  It’s a disappointment to me, you know,”—­he was looking at Miss Penny’s bright face, surcharged with deepest sympathy.

“Of course it is,” she said gently.  “But a strong man bears his disappointments without wincing.  I think you’re acting nobly.”

“Say, Graeme, will you have me as best man?”

“Delighted, my dear fellow.  Miss Penny has been breaking her heart at thought of having no partner at the ceremony.”

“Right!  Then we’ll say no more about it.  How did you all come to meet here?  Put-up job?”

“Not a bit of it,” said Graeme.  “Pure coincidence—­or Providence, we’ll say.  You remember that Whitefriars’ dinner, when Adam Black sat opposite to us?  He was just back from Sark, and he said, ’If ever you want relief from your fellows—­try Sark.’  Well, later on, I had no reason to believe there was anything between you and Margaret, and I called on your father at his office.  He sliced me into scraps with his eye-glass and flung the bits out into Lincoln’s Inn,”—­at which Charles Svendt grinned amusedly, as though he were familiar with the process.—­“I wanted to get away somewhere to piece up again.  Sark came into my head, and I came.  A month later my landlady told me she had let my rooms to two ladies, as she had understood I was only stopping for a month, and I had to turn out and come up here.  And, to my vast amazement, the two ladies proved to be Margaret and Miss Penny.  How is that for coincidence?”

“I was standing in the hedge there,” said Margaret, “early in the morning of the day after we got here, and Jock came leaping over the dyke there with a great brown dog, and stopped as if he’d been shot—­”