nd
of emotions; Turnbull was quite cheerful and was knocking out the end of
his pipe.

"You see, we have to do it," said MacIan. "She tied us to it."

"Of course, my dear fellow," said the other, and leapt up as lightly as
a monkey.

They took their places gravely in the very centre of the great square of
sand, as if they had thousands of spectators. Before saluting, MacIan,
who, being a mystic, was one inch nearer to Nature, cast his eye round
the huge framework of their heroic folly. The three walls of rock all
leant a little outward, though at various angles; but this impression
was exaggerated in the direction of the incredible by the heavy load of
living trees and thickets which each wall wore on its top like a
huge shock of hair. On all that luxurious crest of life the risen and
victorious sun was beating, burnishing it all like gold, and every bird
that rose with that sunrise caught a light like a star upon it like the
dove of the Holy Spirit. Imaginative life had never so much crowded upon
MacIan. He felt that he could write whole books about the feelings of a
single bird. He felt that for two centuries he would not tire of being
a rabbit. He was in the Palace of Life, of which the very tapestries
and curtains were alive. Then he recovered himself, and remembered his
affairs. Both men saluted, and iron rang upon iron. It was exactly
at the same moment that he realized that his enemy's left ankle was
encircled with a ring of salt water that had crept up to his feet.

"What is the matter?" said Turnbull, stopping an instant, for he had
grown used to every movement of his extraordinary fellow-traveller's
face.

MacIan glanced again at that silver anklet of sea-water and then looked
beyond at the next promontory round which a deep sea was boiling and
leaping. Then he turned and looked back and saw heavy foam being shaken
up to heaven about the base of Cragness Point.

"The sea has cut us off," he said, curtly.

"I have noticed it," said Turnbull with equal sobriety. "What view do
you take of the development?"

Evan threw away his weapon, and, as his custom was, imprisoned his big
head in his hands. Then he let them fall and said: "Yes, I know what it
means; and I think it is the fairest thing. It is the finger of God--red
as blood--still pointing. But now it points to two graves."

There was a space filled with the sound of the sea, and then MacIan
spoke again in a voice pathetically reasonable: "You see,