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maiden, Albert handed it to her.
    ‘My Bertha Alexanders are riddled, completely riddled. They won’t win this year.’
    She had not summoned him to discuss insects.
    ‘You left a message at the store?’ Albert repeated.
    ‘Did I? Oh, so I did, so I did. It’s my greenhouse, dear.’
    She pointed with her cane.
    ‘Two little children came into the garden yesterday. I didn’t know there were any children on the Island, Albert. To whom do they belong? One had a catapult. My, my, they are high-spirited.’
    Sixteen shattered panes of the greenhouse bore mute testimony to the nature of their spirits. Master Gaunt, Albert deduced, had recently passed by.
    He sighed as he took out his notebook.
    ‘I’ll look after this.’ He had a protective, proprietary feeling for his old Islanders, and Lady Syddyns was his favourite.
    ‘I knew you would, dear.’ She clicked off her hearing aid, smiled courteously, and went back to her pruning.
    When he reached the gate, she called him.
    ‘Oh, you mustn’t go without one of my Star of Hollands. Such a year for aphides, but fortunately these have come through unscathed.’
    Unconcerned with R.C.M.P. regulations, she pushed the rose through the button-hole of his tunic.
    What a delightful old oddity she was, thought Albert, and he waited until he was around the bend of the road before removing the rose. He sniffed it wearily as he made his way home.
    The old Sergeant-Major’s cottage stood only a stone’s throw from the high-tide line, with a short, overgrownpath leading from the log-strewn beach almost directly to its door.
    Grey shingles, weathered by the salt winds gave the two-roomed cottage a shabby air that was partly relieved by a scarlet trumpet honeysuckle vine.
    Despite its worn appearance, the house was soundly built, for the old Sergeant-Major had raised it with his own hands, and like his son, he had been thorough.
    It was a house with a face: two windows with the door between gave it the appearance of a pair of unblinking eyes separated by a nose. A dull, plain face and the only frivolous aspect of the whole scene was the gay honeysuckle, which held the little cottage in an embrace of jaunty green tendrils. Albert’s mother had planted it when she came to the Island as a bride, and Albert watered it, pruned it, fed it and tied it with a secret tenderness.
    Albert retired early, and at seven the next morning, his day off, he was awakened by a heavy pounding on the door. Still in his pyjamas, he opened it to find Mr Duncan.
    Sergeant Coulter gazed at him in alarm, for, with his ginger handlebar moustaches quivering and his fists clenching and unclenching, the old man looked like a Viking berserker.
    ‘Come with me!’ he roared.
    ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ asked Albert, throwing on his clothes.
    Mr Duncan only sputtered and cursed, so Albert followed him silently. The old man sprinted with such agility that Albert, for all his youth, was breathless by the time they reached Mr Duncan’s farm.
    Pointing a finger at the Iron Duke, the old man wheeled on Albert.
    ‘What are you going to do about this?’
    Sergeant Coulter looked, closed his eyes and looked again. No, it was not some hitherto unknown bovine disorder.
    The Iron Duke’s sacred coat was covered with heliotrope-blue polka dots, the identical colour of Mr Duncan’s barn.
    ‘Well?’ bellowed Mr Duncan, ‘you know who did it, don’t you?’
    Sergeant Coulter’s imagination did not have far to soar.
    ‘I’ll go down to the store immediately,’ he said. He sighed. ‘Where was the paint? Did you leave it outside?’
    Mr Duncan pointed. The brush and paint were beside the barn door.
    Sergeant Coulter walked over and looked in the doorway. Inside, Agnes Duncan was convulsed in happy, hysterical giggles.
    ‘Isn’t it the funniest thing you ever saw?’ she gasped.
    Albert wanted at least to smile, but he was too awed by the old man. He jerked his head warningly in the direction of her father.