torn from his hands. The fingers still gripped the stick. There was life
in them yet.

Suddenly something gave way. The hand swung about, tearing the branch
from Weigall's grasp. The body had been liberated and flung outward,
though still submerged by the foam and spray.

Weigall scrambled to his feet and sprang along the rocks, knowing that
the danger from suction was over and that Gifford must be carried
straight to the quiet pool. Gifford was a fish in the water and could
live under it longer than most men. If he survived this, it would not be
the first time that his pluck and science had saved him from drowning.

Weigall reached the pool. A man in his evening clothes floated on it,
his face turned towards a projecting rock over which his arm had fallen,
upholding the body. The hand that had held the branch hung limply over
the rock, its white reflection visible in the black water. Weigall
plunged into the shallow pool, lifted Gifford in his arms and returned
to the bank. He laid the body down and threw off his coat that he might
be the freer to practise the methods of resuscitation. He was glad of
the moment's respite. The valiant life in the man might have been
exhausted in that last struggle. He had not dared to look at his face,
to put his ear to the heart. The hesitation lasted but a moment. There
was no time to lose.

He turned to his prostrate friend. As he did so, something strange and
disagreeable smote his senses. For a half-moment he did not appreciate
its nature. Then his teeth clacked together, his feet, his outstretched
arms pointed towards the woods. But he sprang to the side of the man and
bent down and peered into his face. There was no face.

III

The Dead and the Countess

(Republished from the _Smart Set_)

It was an old cemetery, and they had been long dead. Those who died
nowadays were put in the new burying-place on the hill, close to the
Bois d'Amour and within sound of the bells that called the living to
mass. But the little church where the mass was celebrated stood
faithfully beside the older dead; a new church, indeed, had not been
built in that forgotten corner of Finisterre for centuries, not since
the calvary on its pile of stones had been raised in the tiny square,
surrounded then, as now, perhaps, by gray naked cottages; not since the
castle with its round tower, down on the river, had been erected for the
Counts of Croisac. But the stone walls enclosing that ancien