He sprang up, threw the rest of the contents of his bag to the birds—and I did the same—picked up the traveling rug and, taking my hand, ran down the slope with me to the spot where our boat was moored.

"Jump in," he said. "I'll push her out."

He did so and I took the oars.

"You don't need practice," he said. "You're an expert oarswoman."

We reached the Island and tied up the boat.

"Before we go back," he said, "I'm going to take you to old Tassie, the wise woman of the Island."

"A sort of lady witch doctor?"

"Not a bad description. She'll tell your fortune. I know you like having your fortune told. All women do."

We walked up the incline and came to a small cottage which stood in the center of a garden; among the herbs which grew there I recognized rosemary, parsley and sage; but there were plenty of others which I did not know. As we approached, an old woman appeared at the cottage door.

"Good day to 'ee, Master Jago," she said.

"Good day, Tassie," he returned. "I've brought my ward along to see you. This is Miss Ellen Kellaway."

"Good day to 'ee, my lady," she said. I returned her greeting while I studied her. Her face was very wrinkled and her bright black eyes reminded me of a monkey's, sharp and shrewd in her aged face; she wore a gray crocheted shawl about her shoulders and the black cat who rubbed himself about her skirts, with his bright green wary eyes, fitted the scene perfectly, as no doubt he was meant to.

We stepped into a room cluttered with objects and in which there was a faint pungent odor. The hearth was large enough to take a chimney seat on either side and the cat, who had followed us in, leaped into a basket and lay there watching us. I noticed the various pots and pans full of mysterious contents which stood on the table and the bunches of herbs which hung from the beams.

"So you have brought your young lady to visit me, Master." She almost smirked. " 'Twas what I would have expected of 'ee."

"She's anxious to learn about the Island, Tassie, and she couldn't know much until she'd visited you."

"'Tis so. I've lived in this dwelling all my life, my dear. My mother lived here before me and my grandmother. It were her mother who had it when married. Moonlight Cottage it were, built in a night, though it have been added to since."

"That must have been in my great-grandfather's day," said Jago.

She nodded. "And a man he were for scattering his seed far and wide. There be a saying on the Island that there's scarce a family that hasn't got the Kellaway blood in it somewhere back."

"It binds us together," said Jago. "What have you got to tell Madam Ellen?"

"Let me see for 'ee, my dear. Come close and do 'ee sit down near me."

She took my hands but did not gaze into my palms but into my face.

"Oh my life, I do see much here for you. There's good and there's bad."

"Doesn't that apply to all of us?" asked Jago.

"To some more than others." Jago was watching her intently and I was as much aware of him as of her. "You've had trouble... tragedy in your life. You've lost someone close to 'ee. That was a black time, and now there's a choice for 'ee. There's two roads open to 'ee. You must be sure and take the right one."

"Tassie has special powers," said Jago. "She is greatly respected on the Island."

"How shall I know which is the right one?" I asked.

"You'll be guided, my dear. There's one right beside 'ee to guide 'ee. You'm come home to your family and 'tis a good thing you've done, for that's where you belong to be."

The black cat rose from its basket, stretched itself and came to rub itself against her skirts.

"I see happiness for 'ee, me dear, if you do take the right turning and I see trouble if you don't. You'm facing the right way now but a little while back 'twasn't so."

"You'd better listen to Tassie's advice," said Jago. "The girls of the Island all come to her and they'll tell you she's never wrong." "' Tis so. A love potion they'll be wanting and I give it to them. They wants some young fellow to fall in love with them. You won't want that, me dear. Your fate be settled. 'Twill be soon, for 'tis right at hand."

Jago laughed, evidently pleased with her.

"Go on, Tassie," he commanded.

" 'Tis for the young lady to take the right course and she'll be happy for the rest of her days. She'll have fine sons and a daughter or two to bring comfort to her. She's had a long journey but she's home now."

"There, Ellen," said Jago smiling at me, his eyes gleaming, and I thought: He is really falling in love with me!

The prospect excited me and at the same time made me feel a little apprehensive. I knew that his emotions would be fierce, for there were no half measures about him. He was young; he could not be much more than thirty; he was unmarried—I wondered why he had remained so, so long—and right from the moment I had seen him at the Carringtons' I had been aware of him... physically.

Tassie seemed to have come to the conclusion that she had settled my future. All I had to do was to be guided, presumably by Jago.

She started to tell me what she did for the young people of the Island. "I'll charm the warts off their skins, the sties from their eyes, and when they'm choking for breath I'll give ease for that. There's many who have more faith in Tassie than any doctor. And I'll look into the future too. My great-grandmother was hanged for a witch. We don't hang them now. People has more sense. They know a white witch from a black 'un and we're the white sort in our family. Pellar families we be. Long ago a mermaid were stranded on this Island and one of my ancestors helped her back to the sea. For that she gave the family special sight. And we've had it ever since."

"So if you see a mermaid about, Ellen," said Jago, "help her back to the sea. You'll probably be rewarded."

" 'Tis true," said Tassie. "The seventh child of a seventh child and pellar into the bargain." She came close to me. "I can help you to lift a spell that be cast on you, to turn aside an evil wish. So come to me, young maid, if you be in trouble."

"That's more than an invitation, I must tell you, Ellen," said Jago. "It means that Tassie accepts you as an Islander."

He placed several coins on the table and I saw an avaricious gleam in Tassie's eyes, for she couldn't help watching and, I was sure, counting them as he laid them down.

We came out into the autumn sunshine.

"You must admit she gave you a pleasant fortune, Ellen," said Jago.

"And it seemed to me that she was well paid for it."

He looked at me sharply. "Well, she deserved it, didn't she?"

"If clients are going to pay according to what they're told, isn't that a temptation to the seer to be overoptimistic?"

"I don't think she was about yours. In fact, I know you're going to have a good one."

"Don't forget that rests with me."

"But you're a wise woman, Ellen. I knew it from the moment I saw you. But joking aside, she's a colorful character, our white witch, don't you think? She provides quite a bit of entertainment for our young. They think it's a great adventure to visit her at night in secret to get a love potion which they can administer to a lover."

"Is she really the seventh child of a seventh child?"

"So she tells us and whether her ancestor in fact found the mermaid, I'll leave you to guess. Old Tassie has always been there as long as I can remember."

"And people really believe in her!"

"Some do. If their wishes are granted they think Tassie has helped them. If they aren't, they think it's due to something they have failed in. It couldn't work out better than that from Tassie's point of view."

"And what about you? Do you believe her?"

He looked at me steadily. "I'm like the rest. If I get what I want, I do."

"And if you don't?"

"My dear Ellen, I always make sure I do."

We returned to the castle and I was preoccupied all the rest of the day thinking of this new aspect in our relationship and asking myself if it had really been there or I had imagined it; and when I retired to my room and lighted my candles and the shadows began to form I remembered Silva, and it seemed to me that her spirit brooded over the dimly lit room.

"My sister," I whispered; and I seemed to sense a response about me. It was fancy, of course. Jago would laugh at me. He laughed at so much—at Tassie (and how much had he commanded her to say?), at the manner in which he had behaved in London both at the recital and the house in Finlay Square. The disconcerting aspect was that when I was with him I could accept these things in the light he wished me to; it was only when I considered them calmly that they seemed, at the least, exceedingly unconventional. But then he was unconventional; he was also unpredictable. I could not understand him; yet he had betrayed something during the afternoon. He did not want my friendship with Michael Hydrock to grow any more than Gwennol and Jenifry did; but was I right in thinking it was for a different reason?

He had enjoyed listening to Tassie, the wise woman who gave her clients what they wanted whether it was something to cure their warts and sties or wedding bells.

Could it really be that Jago Kellaway wanted to be my husband!

It was a disturbing thought, but if I was honest I must say that it was one which excited me. Yet what did I really know of him? What did I know of anyone here?

"Silva," I whispered into the gloom. "Are you there, Silva?" I listened. The curtains moved lightly in the breeze but there was no sound but the distant murmur of the sea.

The next day I went to find Slack.

He was in the courtyard feeding a sea gull which stood on the cobbles and was eating fish from a saucer.

"Her can't fly, Miss Ellen," Slack told me. "Found her on the cliffs I did. Her wings be all clogged with oil. Cowering on that ridge she were and I reckon had had no food for days. 'Twasn't only that—the others was pecking at her. Birds be terrible cruel one to the other. If one be maimed or different-like, they peck it to death. People be like that sometimes. They don't always like them as are different."

He spoke without sadness, merely as though he were stating a simple fact, although I knew he was likening himself to a bird who was "different." He accepted what life had given him. He was content to be different and never forgot that God had given him the Power, as he called it.

"What a good thing you found it," I said.

"Her's frightened yet. But her's calmer when I speak to her. When I picked her up first her tried to flutter and fight me but when I spoke to her and told her it was only Old Slack, who knew what to do and make her well again, her was quiet. See, I'm getting the oil off her wings. But I don't want her flying yet. I want to feed her... slow-like at first. Mustn't gobble up too much yet. There now, my pretty, Slack 'ull look after 'ee, you see."

"What happened to the pigeon with the injured leg?"

"Bold as brass now. He have forgot he were ever hurt."

"And suitably grateful to Slack, I hope."

"I wouldn't want that, Miss Ellen. Tis thanks enough to see him there, pecking at his maize, sitting on my hand, head cocked on one side as though to say: 'Hello, Slacky. I'm myself again.'"

"Slack," I said, "I've come to ask you something. Will you come out in a boat with me. I shall do the rowing. I just want you to sit with me. I've promised Mr. Jago that I won't take a boat out alone... yet."

He was pleased to be asked. His great pleasure in life was looking after people, and the fact that I trusted him enough to ask him to go with me delighted him.

I rowed round the Island.

"You be proper good with the oars, Miss Ellen," he said. "And you soon get to know where the rocks are. 'Tis safe enough if you don't go too far out to sea though there'd be little danger on a sea like this one. But you do know how quick a breeze can arise. The sea can be smooth like a sheet of silk; then in fifteen minutes she can get all angry and ruffled up. That's what 'ee've got to watch for if 'ee be going to the mainland. Rowing round the Island be easy enough. There be many little bays where you could land if need be."

"Do you hear of many people drowning?"

I was watching him intently and I saw the shutter come down over his eyes.