in that abominable sink of death.

Abominable, yes, to them who discerned there death only; but sacramental
and sweet enough to the men who were dying there for love. Any face that
rose was smiling.

The thunder receded; the rain was less vehement: the boats and the oars
had drifted against the banks. And always the patient river bore its
awful burden towards Iffley.

As on the towing-path, so on the youth-bereft rafts of the barges,
yonder, stood many stupefied elders, staring at the river, staring back
from the river into one another's faces.

Dispeopled now were the roofs of the barges. Under the first drops of
the rain most of the women had come huddling down for shelter inside;
panic had presently driven down the rest. Yet on one roof one woman
still was. A strange, drenched figure, she stood bright-eyed in the
dimness; alone, as it was well she should be in her great hour; draining
the lees of such homage as had come to no woman in history recorded.

XX

Artistically, there is a good deal to be said for that old Greek friend
of ours, the Messenger; and I dare say you blame me for having, as it
were, made you an eye-witness of the death of the undergraduates, when
I might so easily have brought some one in to tell you about it after
it was all over... Some one? Whom? Are you not begging the question?
I admit there were, that evening in Oxford, many people who, when they
went home from the river, gave vivid reports of what they had seen. But
among them was none who had seen more than a small portion of the whole
affair. Certainly, I might have pieced together a dozen of the various
accounts, and put them all into the mouth of one person. But credibility
is not enough for Clio's servant. I aim at truth. And so, as I by my
Zeus-given incorporeity was the one person who had a good view of the
scene at large, you must pardon me for having withheld the veil of
indirect narration.

"Too late," you will say if I offer you a Messenger now. But it was not
thus that Mrs. Batch and Katie greeted Clarence when, lamentably soaked
with rain, that Messenger appeared on the threshold of the kitchen.
Katie was laying the table-cloth for seven o'clock supper. Neither she
nor her mother was clairvoyante. Neither of them knew what had been
happening. But, as Clarence had not come home since afternoon-school,
they had assumed that he was at the river; and they now assumed from the
look of him that something very unusual ha