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her. “Now, about the invitation—”
    Between them they drafted the wording of the card to be used and Fenella announced her intention of taking it down to the village at once to put the order in hand.
    “Because Mr. Nicholls will have to send away to get them printed and we haven’t got too much time to spare,” she explained.
    Her aunt nodded in an abstracted way, and Fenella went off on her errand. There were two ways down to the village. One, the shorter, was by the road. The other, through the grounds of Lyon House and round by the cliff path, was considerably longer but infinitely more pleasant. Fenella decided to take that.
    It was a glorious day. Gorse was blazing in the May sunshine and high overhead, larks were singing. In spite of the ache in her heart, Fenella’s spirits rose and by the time she reached the gate in the hedge that bounded the grounds of the house, she was feeling positively lighthearted.
    She shut and locked the gate carefully and turned to find herself face to face with a young man who had evidently come up from the beach below and was now going to the village by the same route that she herself was taking.
    He gave her a smiling greeting natural in such circumstances and Fenella found herself responding in the same easy, friendly way. Then, almost inevitably, they fell into step with one another and found no difficulty in discovering topics of conversation.
    He, so he told her, was doing some skin diving off the ship moored off the coast,
    “Not one of the regular team, though. Just an amateur. But they’re very decently allowing me to make a nuisance of myself because I need the information for a book— and it’s the sort of thing you can’t write up convincingly if you only know about it second hand.”
    “It must be very interesting and exciting,” Fenella said with a touch of envy in her voice.
    Her new acquaintance laughed.
    “Interesting, yes. But only occasionally exciting. There’s an awful lot of drudgery for every discovery, you know.”
    “Yes, I suppose so,” Fenella agreed. “But you have discovered things, haven’t you? At least that’s according to local gossip.”
    “Is it?” He glanced at her with the first hint of reserve she had seen in his frank brown eyes. “You surprise me, Miss Calder—it is Miss Calder, isn’t it? From Lyon House?"
    Fenella nodded, surprised that he had placed her so easily. That he knew Lyon House by name and had realised that she must have come from there was not remarkable, but that he should have identified her by name—”
    “Martin Adair,” he introduced himself, and went on : “I'm surprised because I'd come to the conclusion that the local people are taciturn to the point of being—well, it would hardly be exaggerating to say—unfriendly.'' He looked at her enquiringly.
    “Ah well, you see, you’re a stranger," Fenella explained gravely. “A foreigner, really. Everybody is that who wasn't born in Cornwall, you see. It's by way of being a world of its own.''
    “I’ve realised that,'' Martin replied. “After all, the County is all but an island so that even these days, there must be a feeling of being a place apart. And yet—'' he paused and shook his head.
    “Yes?'' Fenella asked encouragingly.
    “I can't help feeling that there’s something more to it than that,'' he said slowly. “A personal animosity directed specifically against me.”
    “Oh, not you, particularly,” Fenella assured him. “Just everybody on the salvage ship."
    “Really? But why?”
    “Oh, it’s rather difficult to explain to someone who doesn’t belong here,'' Fenella told him hesitantly.
    “Please do try,” Martin urged. “It’s really rather important to me.''
    “The wreck you’re looking for—”
    “We've found it,'' Martin interpolated.
    “Yes—well, you see, it's so near in that people have come to regard it as—as being theirs, in a way. And so they resent any outsiders coming here to take things away—'' she left