ing
across it and could feel its power, he turned and looked back. As he did
so he murmured aloud:

'A dream! A vision! She came to warn me!' For as he looked all had
disappeared. Cliff and coastline, dark rocks and leaping seas, blazing
fire, and the warning vision of the woman he loved.

Again he looked where the waste of sea churning amongst the sunken rocks
had been. He could hear the roaring of waters, the thunder of great
waves beating on the iron-bound coast; but nothing could he see. He was
alone on the wild sea; in the dark.

Then truly the swift shadow of despair fell upon him.

'Blind Blind!' he moaned, and for the moment, stricken with despair,
sank into the trough of the waves. But the instinctive desire for life
recalled him. Once more he fought his way up to the surface, and swam
blindly, desperately on. Seeing nothing, he did not know which way he
was going. He might have heard better had his eyes been able to help his
ears; but in the sudden strange darkness all the senses were astray. In
the agony of his mind he could not even feel the pain of his burnt face;
the torture of his eyes had passed. But with the instinct of a strong
man he kept on swimming blindly, desperately.

* * * * *

It seemed as if ages of untold agony had gone by, when he heard a voice
seemingly beside him:

'Lay hold here! Catch the girth!' The voice came muffled by wind and
wave. His strength was now nearly at its last.

The shock of his blindness and the agony of the moments that had passed
had finished his exhaustion. But a little longer and he must have sunk
into his rest. But the voice and the help it promised rallied him for a
moment. He had hardly strength to speak, but he managed to gasp out:

'Where? where? Help me! I am blind!' A hand took his and guided it to
a tightened girth. Instinctively his fingers closed round it, and he
hung on grimly. His senses were going fast. He felt as if it was all a
strange dream. A voice here in the sea! A girth! A horse; he could
hear its hard breathing.

The voice came again.

'Steady! Hold on! My God! he's fainted! I must tie him on!' He heard
a tearing sound, and something was wound round his wrists. Then his
nerveless fingers relaxed their hold; and all passed into oblivion.

CHAPTER XXXIII--THE QUEEN'S ROOM

To Stephen all that now happened seemed like a dream. She saw Hector and
his gallant young master forge across the smoo