froth, and
furrows, even where it did not splash, and spout, and leap, as it loved
to do. In the depth of the night, when even the roar of the water seemed
drowsy and indolent, and the calm trees stooped with their heavy limbs
over-changing the darkness languidly, and only a few rays of the moon,
like the fluttering of a silver bird, moved in and out the mesh-work, I
leaned upon, my elbow, and I saw the dead George Bowring.

He came from the pit of the river toward me, quietly and without stride
or step, gliding over the water like a mist or the vapour of a calm
white frost; and he stopped at the ripple where the shore began, and he
looked at me very peacefully. And I felt neither fear nor doubt of him,
any more than I do of this pen in my hand.

"George," I said, "I have been uneasy all the day about you and I cannot
sleep, and I have had no comfort. What has made you treat me so?"

He seemed to be anxious to explain, having always been so
straightforward; but an unknown hand or the power of death held him, so
that he could only smile. And then it appeared to me as if he pointed
to the water first and then to the sky, with such an import that I
understood (as plainly as if he had pronounced it) that his body lay
under the one and his soul was soaring on high through the other; and,
being forbidden to speak, he spread his hands, as if entrusting me with
all that had belonged to him; and then he smiled once more, and faded
into the whiteness of the froth and foam.

And then I knew that I had been holding converse, face to face, with
Death; and icy fear shpok me, and I strove in vain to hide my eyes from
everything. And when I awoke in the morning there was a gray trunk of an
alder tree, just George Bowring's height and size, on the other side of
the water, so that I could have no doubt that himself had been there.

After a search of about three hours we found the body of my dear friend
in a deep black pool of the Aydyr--not the first hole below the place
in which he sat down to his luncheon, but nearly a hundred yards farther
down, where a bold cliff jutted out and bent the water scornfully. Our
quarrymen would not search this pool until the sunlight fell on it,
because it was a place of dread with a legend hovering over it. "The
Giant's Tombstone" was the name of the crag that overhung it; and the
story was that the giant Idris, when he grew worn out with age, chose
this rock out of many others near the top of the m