d Sir Adrian, "and you and I, friend, will go too, and help
this good fellow in his task. I hope, I believe, that I should have
done this thing of my own thought, had I had time to think at all. But
now, more hangs upon those creaking chains than you can dream of. This
is a strange world--and it is full of ghosts to-night. But we must
hurry, Renny."

* * * * *

Bound even to the tips of her burning little fingers by the spell of
the opiate, Lady Landale lay in the shadowed room as one dead, yet in
her sick brain fearfully awake, keenly alive.

At first it was as if she too was manacled in chains till she could
not move a muscle, could not breathe or cry because of the ring round
her breast; and she was hanging with the black figure, swaying, while
the rusty iron links went creak, creak, creak, with every swing to and
fro. Then suddenly she seemed to stand, as it were, out of herself and
to be seeing with the naked soul alone. And what she saw was the great
stretch of beach and sea, white, white, white, in the moonlight and
spreading, it seemed, for leagues and leagues, spreading till all the
world was only beach and sea.

But close to her in the whitest moonlight rose the great gibbet, gaunt
and black, cutting the pale sky in two and athwart; and hanging from
it was the black figure that swayed and swung. And though the winds
muttered and the waves growled, she could not hear them with the ears
of the soul, for that the whole of this great world of sea and sand
was filled with the creaking of the chains.

But now, across the bleak and pallid spaces came three black figures.
And, as she looked and watched and they drew nearer, the dreadful
burthen of the gibbet swung round as if to greet them, and she too,
felt in her soul that she knew them all three, though not by names, as
creatures of earth know each other, but by the kinship of the soul.
This man with hair as white as the white beach, hair that seemed to
shine silver as he came; and him yonder who followed him as a dog his
master; and yonder again the third, in the seaman's dress, with hard
face hewn into such rugged lines of grief and fury--she knew them all.
And next they reached the gibbet: and one swarmed up the black post,
and hammered and filed and prised, and then, oh merciful God! the
creaking stopped at last!

Now she could hear the wash of the waves, the rush of the wholesome
wind!

A mist came across her vision; fai