vile creatures hung grew less and less. There was no longer room for
both of them. They began to quarrel, to curse and jibber at each other,
their fierce, bestial faces not an inch apart as they crouched there on
hands and knees. The water rose a little, they were kneeling in it now,
and the man, putting down his bald head, butted at the woman, almost
thrusting her from her perch. But she was strong and active, she
struggled back again; she did more, with an eel-like wriggle she climbed
upon his back, weighing him down. He strove to shake her off but
could not, for on that heaving, rolling surface he dared not loose his
hand-grip, so he turned his flat and florid face, and, seizing her
leg between his teeth, bit and worried at it. In her pain and rage Meg
screeched aloud--that was the cry which Foy had heard. Then suddenly
she drew a knife from her bosom--Elsa saw it flash in the moonlight--and
stabbed downwards once, twice, thrice.

Elsa shut her eyes. When she opened them again the woman was alone upon
the little patch of red boarding, her body splayed out over it like that
of a dead frog. So she lay a while till suddenly the cap of the Red Mill
dipped slowly like a lady who makes a Court curtsey, and she vanished.
It rose again and Meg was still there, moaning in her terror and water
running from her dress. Then again it dipped, this time more deeply, and
when the patch of rusty boarding slowly reappeared, it was empty. No,
not quite, for clinging to it, yowling and spitting, was the half-wild
black cat which Elsa had seen wandering about the mill. But of Black Meg
there was no trace.

It was dreadfully cold up there hanging to the sail-bar, for now that
the rain had finished, it began to freeze. Indeed, had it not chanced
that Elsa was dressed in her warm winter gown with fur upon it, and dry
from her head to her feet, it is probable that she would have fallen off
and perished in the water. As it was gradually her body became numb and
her senses faded. She seemed to know that all this matter of her forced
marriage, of the flood, and of the end of Simon and Meg, was nothing but
a dream, a very evil nightmare from which she would awake presently to
find herself snug and warm in her own bed in the Bree Straat. Of course
it must be a nightmare, for look, there, on the bare patch of boarding
beneath, the hideous struggle repeated itself. There lay Hague Simon
gnawing at his wife's foot, only his fat, white face was gone