ept him off his feet. He had much ado to steady
himself against that heap of chalk. The snow had covered his cloak and
his hat, and he liked to think that he, too, now--snow-covered--must
look like a monstrous chalk boulder, weird and motionless outlined
against the leaden grayness of the ocean beyond.

The smith was not by his side now. There was no lantern, no paper, no
double-edged dagger. Down nearly a hundred feet below the smith had lain
until the turn of the tide. The man's eyes, becoming accustomed to the
gloom, could distinguish the points of the great boulders springing
boldly from out the sand. The surf as it broke all round and over them
was tipped with a phosphorescent light.

The gale, in sheer wantonness, caught the midnight prowler's hat and
with a wild sound as of the detonation of a hundred guns, tossed it to
the waves below. The snow in a few moments had thrown a white pall over
the watcher's head.

He could see quite clearly the tall boulder untouched by the tide, on
which he had placed the black silk shade that night, also the
broad-brimmed hat, so that these things should be found high and dry and
be easily recognizable.

Some twenty feet further on was the smooth stretch of sand where had
lain the smith, after he had been dressed up in the fantastic clothes of
the mysterious French prince.

Marmaduke de Chavasse gazed upon that spot. The breakers licked it now
and again, leaving behind them as they retreated a track of slimy foam,
which showed white in this strange gray gloom, rendered alive and moving
by the falling snow.

The surf covered that stretch of sand more and more frequently now, and
retreated less and less far: the slimy foam floated now over an inky
pool; soon that too disappeared. The breakers sought other boulders
round which to play their titanic hide-and-seek. The tide had
completely hidden the place where Adam Lambert had lain.

Then the watcher walked on--one step and then another--and then the one
beyond the edge as he stepped down, down into the abyss ninety feet
below.

THE EPILOGUE

The chronicles of the time tell us that the mysterious disappearance of
Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse was but a nine days' wonder in that great
world which lies beyond the boundaries of sea-girt Thanet.

What Thanet thought of it all, the little island kept secret, hiding its
surmises in the thicket of her own archaic forests.

Squire Boatfield did his best to wrap the disappear