"Console yourself that nobody knew him well either. Uncle Jago once said he was a loner. Fenwick could tell you more about him than anyone else, I daresay."

"Where is Fenwick?"

"He left when your father died. I think he lives somewhere on the mainland."

"Do you know where?"

She shook her head and seeming to find the questions about my father becoming boring, she changed the subject. "I wonder if there are any of her things in the settle. Look, the seat is the lid of a sort of trunk."

She lifted it and I went over to look inside. There was nothing there but a traveling rug.

"It was evidently used chiefly as a seat," said Gwennol, putting the lid down and sitting on it. But she jumped up almost immediately. "Let's go and see Slack," she said. "I want him to row me over to the mainland tomorrow. Would you like to come? I know you haven't explored the Island yet and you did spend some time on the mainland waiting, but I always like to take advantage of calm seas. I shall be visiting friends so perhaps you'd like to explore a bit. We could go to the inn and get horses there, if you liked. It's what I often do."

I said I would like to do that.

"Very well, though of course it depends on the weather."

"So Slack will row us over."

"Yes, he loves to and it gives him an opportunity to see his mother."

"He's a strange boy. I discovered him when he was feeding the pigeons."

"Oh, so you've already met Slack. They say he's 'lacking' but over some things he's quite bright. It's just that he's different from most people. He came to us when he was about eleven. Uncle Jago noticed him. He had found a baby robin and was looking after it. Jago thought he'd be useful to look after the pigeons, which at that time were being attacked by some disease, and you know there's a legend about when the pigeons go the Kellaways will lose the Island. Not that Jago would believe that, but he always says he's respectful about superstitions because other people believe in them. Well, he found out that Slack was quite knowledgeable about birds and nature generally, so he took him on. The pigeons thrived immediately. Poor Slack, he can only just read and write and when he was on the mainland he used to go away for days at a time. He drove his mother frantic. Then he'd come back. He'd been in the woods watching the birds. Now of course he wouldn't dream of going away. He has his pigeons to care for."

"When I stayed at the Polcrag Inn his mother mentioned that he was here."

"Yes, Slack's her only child. When he was a little one and showed himself not quite like other children she used to say there was nothing wrong with him but that he came before he was quite done. He was born two months before he should have been apparently. She said he was slack-baked and then people started to call him Slack. Few people understand him and I think they underestimate him. He's a good boy at heart and he made a magnificent job of the pigeons."

"I could see how he felt about them and oddly enough they seemed to be aware of it."

"There's no doubt he's got a way with him. Come on. Let's go and find him now."

He was in the outhouse nursing a pigeon; he scarcely looked at us as we entered.

"She have hurt her leg, see?" He murmured. "There, my pretty, 'tis only Miss Gwennol and Miss Ellen. They'll not harm 'ee."

"Can you heal it, Slack?" asked Gwennol.

"Surely, Miss Gwennol. There be this power in me."

Gwennol looked at me and smiled. "I want you to row me over to the mainland tomorrow, Slack. That's if the sea's like it is today."

"I'll have the boat for 'ee, Miss Gwennol."

"Miss Ellen is coming with me."

He nodded but his attention was all for the bird.

"You know what to do, Slack?" asked Gwennol.

"Oh, aye, Miss Gwennol, I do know."

"And the strange thing is," said Gwennol when we had left him, "that he does, and in a short time that bird will be hopping around so that you won't know him from the rest."

We went back through the courtyards.

In the afternoon I went for a walk and explored various parts of the Island. During dinner I talked to Jago about what I had seen and found I was beginning to catch his enthusiasm.

When I retired for the night I was pleasantly tired. Each day, I promised myself, I would learn more about my family. I was looking forward to more conversation with Gwennol during the next day's trip and I thought I might have a further word with Mrs. Pengelly.

Then, as I was about to get into bed I noticed my mother's sketchbook which I had found that morning, so setting the candle down on the little table by the bed, I started to look through it.

How interesting it was to see parts of the castle reproduced. She had had undoubted talent. One could feel the antiquity of those gray stone walls which she had drawn so realistically. There was a lovely picture of the Blue Rock Island with just a hint of the mainland in the distance. There were some portraits too. There was one of a plump child looking out on the world with large inquiring eyes. I stared at it; then I saw the caption: "E. Aged Two." Why yes, now I recognized myself. So that was how I had looked when I was two. I turned the pages. I was looking at Jago—two portraits of him, facing each other. How she had caught the resemblance! They were like two different men—and yet they were both Jago. Strangely enough, he was smiling in both of them, but in one the smile was benign and in the other... ? It was that one which interested me. It was painted so that wherever one looked the eyes followed one. I had seen him look like that. Had it been in the house in Finlay Square? The heavy lids had fallen slightly over the eyes and it gave them a veiled, almost sinister look; and there was a certain twist about the mouth as though he were plotting something which could brook no good to someone.

I looked at that picture for some time and the pleasant drowsiness which I had felt before I had picked up the book had completely disappeared.

What was my mother trying to say in those pictures? One thing was certain: Jago is not what he might seem to be at times. Could it be that she was saying: "Beware, there are two Jagos"?

I felt uneasy because I was beginning to enjoy his company more than I cared to admit to myself.

I turned the pages and there was another double portrait. My mother seemed to have a fancy for that kind of art, and these two pictures, although clearly of the same subject, were as different from each other as those of Jago. In one of these I saw a rather demure girl, her hair in plaits, one of which fell over her shoulder. She was looking upwards as though in prayer and she held a Bible in her hands. In the picture on the opposite page, the girl's hair was unbound. It fell untidily and her face peeped out from the curtain of hair; the eyes were wild and there was a look of strangeness in the face that I found hard to define. The expression was in a way tortured, the eyes pleading; she looked as though she were trying to tell some secret and did not know how.

It was a horrible picture.

Then I saw the initial under it. "S."

I was quite shaken. I got out of bed and opened the cupboard door to look at the immature scratching there. I knew this was the same "S" who had written her message on the wall.

Who, I asked myself, was S?

Sleep had deserted me. I turned over the pages and studied the peaceful landscapes, the colored parts of the castle, hoping they would soothe me; but I kept seeing the wild eyes of S and the picture of Jago had taken me right back to those moments in the house in Finlay Square.

There was a further shock from that sketchbook—and this was the greatest of them all. I was telling myself that my mother had just been amusing herself and that it might be she had conjured up pictures out of her imagination... taking a face she knew well and adding touches to it to show how a line here and there could change the character.

I didn't really believe that but the thought was comforting.

I turned a page and gasped in amazement. My first thought was that I had fallen asleep and was dreaming, that this was a new way of getting into the dream. There it was on the page and there could be no doubt of it: the room of my dream!

There was the fireplace, the chimney seat, the rocking chair, the picture over the fireplace... everything was there as I had seen it in my dreams.

I was too stunned to do anything but stare at it.

One thought kept hammering on my brain: The phantom room existed. My mother had seen it. Could it be in the castle? But I had explored the castle.

The sketchbook fell from my hands and lay on the bed coverlet. What did it mean? What could it mean? I almost felt that the spirit of my mother was in this room and trying to get in touch with me through her sketchbook.

What did she know of Jago? She had seen him as two different men. And who was S who could look so demure and so wild?

But it was the picture of the room which haunted me. Where was that room? One thing I had learned: It must exist, for my mother knew it. She had sketched it in her book. It was there for me to see. It was no piece of imagination.

I tried to look back over the years to my grandmother's garden when we had sat together on the lawn and her sketchbook lay on the grass between us.

One thing I could now be sure of: The dream room existed. But where?

On Sanctuary Island

I slept fitfully that night and oddly enough I did not have my dream. The first thing I did when I was awake was to pick up the sketchbook, for I had an idea, which I didn't believe for more than a moment, that I had dreamed what I had seen in the book.