tching her opportunity,
stepped into it, nearly falling into the water as she did so. But she
recovered her balance, and sat down. In another minute she was paddling
out to sea with all her strength.

For twenty minutes or more she paddled unceasingly. Then she rested
awhile, only keeping the canoe head on to the sea, which, without being
rough, was running more and more freshly. There, some miles away, was
the dark mass of Rumball Point. She must be off it before the night
closed in. There would be sea enough there; no such craft as hers could
live in it for five minutes, and the tide was on the turn. Anything
sinking in those waters would be carried far away, and never come back
to the shore of Wales.

She turned her head and looked at Bryngelly, and the long familiar
stretch of cliff. How fair it seemed, bathed in the quiet lights of
summer afternoon. Oh! was there any afternoon where the child had gone,
and where she was following fast?--or was it all night, black, eternal
night, unbroken by the dram of dear remembered things?

There were the Dog Rocks, where she had stood on that misty autumn
day, and seen the vision of her coffined mother's face. Surely it was a
presage of her fate. There beyond was the Bell Rock, where in that same
hour Geoffrey and she had met, and behind it was the Amphitheatre, where
they had told their love. Hark! what was that sound pealing faintly at
intervals across the deep? It was the great ship's bell that, stirred
from time to time by the wash of the high tide, solemnly tolled her
passing soul.

She paddled on; the sound of that death-knell shook her nerves, and made
her feel faint and weak. Oh, it would have been easier had she been as
she was a year ago, before she learned to love, and hand in hand had
seen faith and hope re-arise from the depths of her stirred soul. Then
being but a heathen, she could have met her end with all a heathen's
strength, knowing what she lost, and believing, too, that she would
find but sleep. And now it was otherwise, for in her heart she did not
believe that she was about utterly to perish. What, could the body live
on in a thousand forms, changed indeed but indestructible and immortal,
while the spiritual part, with all its hopes and loves and fears, melted
into nothingness? It could not be; surely on some new shore she should
once again greet her love. And if it was not, how would they meet her
in that under world, coming self-murdered, her life-b