er pools that formed the lower and
greater fall. His poor body, bruised and beaten, choked and maimed,
had met the same fate as the little dog--and, strange to relate--he had
uttered no cry as he sank backwards into the cold watery abysses from
which there was no escape; his face only showed surprise and reproach
as he looked his last on Ringfield and this world. When upon the
bridge he had expected death, set his teeth and prayed, felt all vital
force drop away, then by degrees flow back again, but now, when Death
clutched him from behind and thrust him over those slippery precipices,
to the last moment there was only a profound consternation in his
staring blue eyes, as if he found it impossible to believe he was being
sucked down, whirled down, to eternity. Such was the end of Edmund
Crabbe Hawtree, Esquire, of Suffolk, England.

Ringfield had not moved since Crabbe had fallen. His face was horrible
in the white intensity of its passion, and he continued to stare at the
spot where a moment before the guide had been sitting without making
the slightest endeavour to go to the rescue, or, by shouting for
assistance, attract the attention of people on the inhabited side of
the river. The image of the little dead dog merged into that of Crabbe
and vice versa; he confused these images and saw unnatural shapes
struggling in stormy waters, and thus the time wore on, ten, twenty,
thirty minutes, before he perceived a man at the far end of the bridge.
At first he thought it was Poussette, then it looked like Martin;
finally he knew it for Father Rielle, and at this everything cleared
and came back to him. He recollected the great hole spoken of by
Crabbe and knew that he ought to call out or lift a hand in warning,
yet he did neither. Father Rielle, however, was not too preoccupied to
observe the hole; he walked around it instead of over or through it and
had the presence of mind to pause, and after a few minutes' kneading
and compressing lumps of the damp snow into a species of scarecrow,
erected the clumsy squat figure of a misshapen man by the side of the
yawning gap and passed on. The sun was radiantly bright by now and the
ice beginning to melt off from twigs and wires; the red carpet-bag
flamed forth more emphatically than ever, and presently the two men
were not more than a few paces apart.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE HAVEN

"Stripp'd as I am of all the golden fruit
Of self-esteem; and by the cutting bla