to cross the canal.
On the bridge he paused and, gripping the parapet, made a surprise
attack upon his enemy.

Some children, playing on the tow path, helped him considerably. Their
delightful sanity in the presence of the water was worth more to him
than the brandy. He was positively winning the battle, when one of the
children fell into the water.

For an instant he hesitated. Then, as on the night of the Tube episode,
panic seized him. The next instant the man who was probably the best
amateur swimmer in England, was running with all his might away from the
canal.

When he reached his chambers he waited, with the assistance of the
brandy, until his man brought him the last edition of the evening paper.
A tiny paragraph on the back sheet told him of the tragedy.

An hour later his man found him face downwards on the hearthrug and,
wrongly attributing his condition wholly to the brandy, put him to bed.

He was in bed about three weeks. The doctor, who was also a personal
friend, was shrewd enough to suspect that the brandy was the effect,
rather than the cause of the nerve trouble.

About the first week in June Cargill was allowed to get up.

"You've got to go away," said the doctor one morning. "You are probably
aware that your nerves have gone to pieces. The sea is the place for
you!"

The gasp that followed was scarcely audible, and the doctor missed it.

"You went to Tryn yr Wylfa about this time last year," continued the
doctor. "Go there again! Go for long walks on the mountains, and put up
at a temperance hotel."

He went to Tryn yr Wylfa.

The train journey of six hours knocked him up for another week. By the
time he was strong enough for the promenade it was the fourteenth of
June. He noticed the date on the hotel calendar, and realised that the
Fates had another ten days in which to drown him.

He did not call on the Lardners. He felt that he couldn't--after the
canal episode. Four of the ten days had passed before Betty Lardner ran
across him on the promenade.

She noticed at once the change in him, and was kinder than she had ever
been before.

"Next Saturday," he said, "is the anniversary!"

For answer she smiled at him, and he might have smiled back if he had
not remembered the canal.

She met him each morning after that, so that she was with him on the day
when he made his atonement.

There had been a violent storm in the early morning. It had driven one
of the quarry steamers on