would have the courage to face."

"You mean?" Cecil gasped.

"I mean," Forrest answered, "what your grandfather would have told him,
or your great grandfather, in half a dozen words weeks ago. At full
tide there is sea enough to drown a dozen such as he within a few yards
of where he lies. Why should we keep him carefully and safe, knowing
that the moment he steps back into life you and I are doomed men?"

Cecil drew a little breath and lifted his hand to his forehead. He was
surprised to find it wet. All the time he was gazing at Forrest with
fascinated eyes.

"Look here," he said, in a hoarse whisper, "we mustn't talk like this.
Engleton will turn round in a day or two. People would think, if they
heard us, that we were planning a murder."

"In a woman's decalogue," Forrest said, "there is no sin save the sin
of being found out. Why not in ours? No one ever had such a chance of
getting rid of a dangerous enemy. The whole thing is in our hands. We
could never be found out, never even questioned. If, by one chance in a
thousand, his body is ever recovered, what more natural? Men have been
drowned before on the marshes here many a time."

"Go on!" Cecil said. "You have thought this out. Tell me exactly what
you propose."

"I propose," Forrest answered, "that we narrow the issues, and that we
put them before him in plain English, now--to-night--while the courage
is still with us. It must be silence or death. I tell you frankly how
it is with me. I would as soon press a pistol to my forehead and pull
the trigger as have this boy go back into the world and tell his story.
For you, too, it would be ruin."

Cecil sank back into his chair, and looked with wide-open but unseeing
eyes across the table, through the wall beyond. He saw his future
damned by that one unpardonable accusation. He saw himself sent out
into the world penniless, an outcast from all the things in life which
made existence tolerable. He knew very well that Andrew would never
forgive. There was no mercy to be hoped for from him. There was nothing
to be looked for anywhere save disaster, absolute and entire. He looked
across at Forrest, and something in his companion's face sent a cold
shiver through his veins.

"We might go and see what he says," he faltered. "I haven't been there
since the morning, have you?"

"No!" Forrest answered. "Solitude is good for him. Let us go now,
together."

Without another word they rose from the table. Cecil le