over to Guernsey; even when a cutter accomplished its voyage out and in,
no letters could arrive for me. The season was so far advanced when I
went to Sark, that those visitors who had been spending a portion of the
summer there had already taken their departure, leaving the islanders to
themselves. They were sufficient for themselves; they and their own
affairs formed the world. Tardif would bring home almost daily little
scraps of news about the other families scattered about Sark; but of the
greater affairs of life in other countries he could tell me nothing.

Yet why should I call these greater affairs? Each to himself is the
centre of the world. It was a more important thing to me that I was
safe, than that the freedom of England itself should be secure.




CHAPTER THE SIXTH.

TOO MUCH ALONE.


Yet looking back upon that time, now it is past, and has "rounded itself
into that perfect star I saw not when I dwelt therein," it would be
untrue to represent myself as in any way unhappy. At times I wished
earnestly that I had been born among these people, and could live
forever among them.

By degrees I discovered that Tardif led a somewhat solitary life
himself, even in this solitary island, with its scanty population. There
was an ugly church standing in as central and prominent a situation as