tholics. And that woman said that they were increasing. They ought to
be fading away."

On the bridge, they paused and looked up and down the rapids rushing
down the slope in all their wild variety, with the white crests of
breaking surf, the dark massiveness of heavy-climbing waves, the fleet,
smooth sweep of currents over broad shelves of sunken rock, the dizzy
swirl and suck of whirlpools.

Spell-bound, the journeyers pored upon the deathful course beneath
their feet, gave a shudder to the horror of being cast upon it, and then
hurried over the bridge to the island, in the shadow of whose wildness
they sought refuge from the sight and sound.

There had been rain in the night; the air war full of forest fragrance,
and the low, sweet voice of twittering birds. Presently they came to a
bench set in a corner of the path, and commanding a pleasant vista of
sunlit foliage, with a mere gleam of the foaming river beyond. As they
sat down here loverwise, Basil, as in the early days of their courtship,
began to recite a poem. It was one which had been haunting him since his
first sight of the rapids, one of many that he used to learn by heart
in his youth--the rhyme of some poor newspaper poet, whom the third or
fourth editor copying his verses consigned to oblivion by carelessly
clipping his name from the bottom. It had always lingered in Basil's
memory, rather from the interest of the awful fact it recorded, than
from any merit of its own; and now he recalled it with a distinctness
that surprised him.

AVERY.

I.
All night long they heard in the houses beside the shore, Heard, or
seemed to hear, through the multitudinous roar, Out of the hell of the
rapids as 'twere a lost soul's cries Heard and could not believe; and
the morning mocked their eyes, Showing where wildest and fiercest the
waters leaped up and ran Raving round him and past, the visage of a man
Clinging, or seeming to cling, to the trunk of a tree that, caught Fast
in the rocks below, scarce out of the surges raught. Was it a life,
could it be, to yon slender hope that clung Shrill, above all the tumult
the answering terror rang.

II.
Under the weltering rapids a boat from the bridge is drowned, Over the
rocks the lines of another are tangled and wound, And the long, fateful
hours of the morning have wasted soon, As it had been in some blessed
trance, and now it is noon. Hurry, now with the raft! But O