ing me
that the Shivering Sand seemed to draw her to it against her will, and
wondering whether her grave was waiting for her THERE. The horror of it
struck at me, in some unfathomable way, through my own child. My girl
was just her age. My girl, tried as Rosanna was tried, might have lived
that miserable life, and died this dreadful death.

The Sergeant kindly lifted me up, and turned me away from the sight of
the place where she had perished.

With that relief, I began to fetch my breath again, and to see things
about me, as things really were. Looking towards the sand-hills, I saw
the men-servants from out-of-doors, and the fisherman, named Yolland,
all running down to us together; and all, having taken the alarm,
calling out to know if the girl had been found. In the fewest words, the
Sergeant showed them the evidence of the footmarks, and told them that
a fatal accident must have happened to her. He then picked out the
fisherman from the rest, and put a question to him, turning about again
towards the sea: "Tell me," he said. "Could a boat have taken her off,
in such weather as this, from those rocks where her footmarks stop?"

The fisherman pointed to the rollers tumbling in on the sand-bank, and
to the great waves leaping up in clouds of foam against the headlands on
either side of us.

"No boat that ever was built," he answered, "could have got to her
through THAT."

Sergeant Cuff looked for the last time at the foot-marks on the sand,
which the rain was now fast blurring out.

"There," he said, "is the evidence that she can't have left this place
by land. And here," he went on, looking at the fisherman, "is the
evidence that she can't have got away by sea." He stopped, and
considered for a minute. "She was seen running towards this place, half
an hour before I got here from the house," he said to Yolland. "Some
time has passed since then. Call it, altogether, an hour ago. How high
would the water be, at that time, on this side of the rocks?" He pointed
to the south side--otherwise, the side which was not filled up by the
quicksand.

"As the tide makes to-day," said the fisherman, "there wouldn't have
been water enough to drown a kitten on that side of the Spit, an hour
since."

Sergeant Cuff turned about northward, towards the quicksand.

"How much on this side?" he asked.

"Less still," answered Yolland. "The Shivering Sand would have been just
awash, and no more."

The Sergeant turned to me, an