CHAPTER XI.
TWO ON AN ISLAND Sara's conviction that Garth Trent would not be easily turned from any decision that he might take had been confirmed very emphatically over the matter of Black Brady.
Notwithstanding the fact that the man's story of his wife's illness proved to be perfectly genuine, Trent persisted that he must take his punishment, and all that Sara could do by way of mitigation was to promise Brady that she would pay the amount of any fine which might be imposed.
Brady, however, was not optimistic.
"There'll be no opshun of a fine, miss," he told her.

"I've a-been up before the gen'lemen too many times"-- grinning.

"But if so be you'd give an eye to Bessie here, whiles I'm in quod, I'd take it very kind of you." His forecast summed up the situation with lamentable accuracy.

No option of a fine was given, and during the brief space that the prison doors closed upon him, Sara saw to the welfare of his invalid wife, thereby winning the undying devotion of Black Brady's curiously composite soul.
When he again found himself at liberty, she induced the frankly unwilling proprietor of the Cliff Hotel--the only hotel of any pretension to which Monkshaven could lay claim--to take him into his employment as an odd-job man.

How she accomplished this feat it is impossible to say, but the fact remains that she did accomplish it, and perhaps Jane Crab delved to the root of the matter in the terse comment which the circumstances elicited from her: "Miss Tennant has a way with her that 'ud make they stone sphinxes gallop round the desert if so be she'd a mind they should." Apparently, however, the sphinx of Far End was compounded of even more adamantine substance than his feminine prototype, for he exhibited a mulish aversion to budging an inch--much less galloping--in the direction Sara had indicated as desirable.
The two quarreled vehemently over the matter, and a glacial atmosphere of hostility prevailed between them during the period of Black Brady's incarceration.
Garth, undeniably the victor, was the first to open peace negotiations, and a few days subsequent to Brady's release from prison, he waylaid Sara in the town.
She was preoccupied with numerous small, unnecessary commissions to be executed for Mrs.Selwyn at half-a-dozen different shops, and she would have passed him by with a frosty little bow had he not halted in front of her and deliberately held out his hand.
"Good-morning!" he said, blithely disregarding the coolness of his reception.