essed a motor-boat.

Bissett was not exactly keen on the prospect.

"Don't you think it is rather a silly thing to do?" he reasoned. "Of
course it's all rot in a way--it must be. But isn't it just as well to
treat that sort of thing with respect?"

Eventually he agreed to take the motor-boat to within a few hundred
yards of the spot. They would tow a dinghy, in which young Cargill could
finish the journey.

It took young Cargill half-an-hour to find the spot. But he did find it,
and he did look upon, and actually see, all that remained of the sunken
village.

He felt vaguely ashamed of himself when he returned to dry land. He
noticed that several of the villagers gave him unfriendly glances; and
he resolved that he would say nothing of the matter to the Lardners.

They were having tea on the lawn when he dropped in. He thought that
Mrs. Lardner's welcome was a trifle chilly. After tea Betty executed a
quite deliberate man[oe]uvre to avoid having him for a partner at
tennis. But he ran her to earth later, when they were picking up the
balls.

"How _could_ you?" was all she said.

"I--I didn't know you knew," he stammered weakly.

"Of course everybody knows! It was all over the village before you
returned.

"Can't you see what that legend meant to us?" she went on. "It was a
thing of beauty. And now you have spoilt it. It's like burning down the
trees of the Fairy Glen. You--you _Goth_!"

"But suppose I am drowned before the year is out--like Roberts?" he
suggested jocularly.

"Then I will forgive you," she said. And to Cargill it sounded exactly
as if she meant what she said.

A few days later he returned to town. For six months he thought little
about the legend. Then he was reminded of it.

He had been spending a week-end at Brighton. On the return journey he
had a first-class smoker in the rear of the train to himself. Towards
the end of the hour he dozed and dreamt of the day he had looked on the
sunken village. He was awakened when the train made its usual stop on
the bridge outside Victoria.

It had been a pleasant dream, and he was still trying to preserve the
illusion when his eye fell lazily on the window, and he noticed that
there was a dense fog.

"Bit rough on the legend that I happened to be a Londoner!" he mused.
"It isn't easy to drown a man in town!"

He stood up with the object of removing his dressing-case from the rack.
But before he reached it there was the shriek of a whistle,