d dead, by that pool in the woods where so many have slept the
dreadful sleep. Clair-de-Lune stumbled upon it as we went joyously
through the sunny thickets and, halting abruptly, his startled cry drew
me to the place. And then I saw the thing, and knew that between him
and me the secret lay, and that here was God's justice written in words
no man might mistake.

For a long time we rested there, looking down upon that grim figure in
its bed of leaves, and watching the open eyes seeking that bright
heaven whose warmth they never would feel again. As in life, so in
death, the handsome face carried the brand of the evil done, and spoke
of the ungoverned passions which had wrecked so wonderful a genius.
There have been few such men as Edmond Czerny since the world began;
there will be few while the world endures. Greatly daring, a man of
boundless ambitions, the moral nature obliterated, the greed of money
becoming, in the end, like some burning disease, this man, I said,
might have achieved much if the will had bent to humanity's laws. And
now he had reaped as he sowed. The cloak that covered him was the cloak
of the Hungarian regiment whose code of honour drove him out of Europe.
The diamond ring upon the finger was the very ring that little Ruth had
given him on their wedding-day. The agony he had suffered was such as
many a good seaman had endured since the wreckers came to Ken's Island.
And now the story was told: the man was dead.

"It must have been last night," I said, at length, to Clair-de-Lune.
"His own men put him ashore and seized the ship. Fortune has strange
chances, but who would have named such a chance as this? The rogues
turned upon him at last, you can't doubt it. And he died in his
sleep--a merciful death."

The old man shook his head very solemnly.

"I know not," said he, slowly; "remember how rare that the island give
mercy! We will not ask how he died, captain. I see some-thing, but I
forget it. Let us leave him to the night."

He began to cover the body with branches and boughs; and anon, marking
the place, that we might return to it to-morrow, we went on again
through the woods, as men in a reverie. Our schemes and plans, our
hopes and fears, the terrible hours, the unforgotten days, aye, if we
could have seen that the end of them would have been this!--the gift of
a verdurous island, and the ripe green pastures, and the woods
awakening and all the glory of the sun-time reborn! For so the shad