arry's eyes, and in their
stern gaze as they seemed to read him through and through, he saw, or
fancied that he saw, his own condemnation, and that Harry was going to
thrust him from his hold.

It was a strange reaction as he hung there--he, the brave and daring
swimmer, famed for his dives off Carn Du, held up by the man he had
always denounced as a terrible coward; whom he had hated from boyhood
almost, without cause, and whom really, under the impulse of a horrible
temptation, he had on the previous night tried to hamper in his
swimming, though not really to drown.

Neither spoke, neither stirred for some time. There was no great strain
upon Harry's hands now, since Penelly's grasp was desperate. The former
was content to lie there gazing into his enemy's eyes, for his strength
was returning with every breath; that breathing was less laboured, and,
in place of his heart throbbing and jumping, sending hot gushes of
blood, as it were, choking to his throat, it began to settle steadily
down to its ordinary labours in the breast of a strongly-built, healthy,
temperate man.

"Conscience makes cowards of us all;" so the great writer has said; and
truer words never stood out bold and striking from the paper on which
they were written.

In his abject misery and dread, Mark Penelly saw, in the stern gaze
before him, anger and a vindictive desire for revenge; he saw therein
fierce hate, and an implacable, unchanging condemnation; he felt that
Harry was sustaining him there where he had dragged him to make his
sufferings more acute, and that, after holding him up for a while, he
would loosen his hold, causing him to sink at once into the deep water
by the rocks, and be swept away by the tremendous current.

He judged Harry Paul, in fact, by the same measure as he would have
meted out to an enemy himself; and so terrible were his thoughts, so
horrifying to him was the thought of the death from which he had
escaped, that he was robbed of all energy; he had not strength to do
more than hang there clinging to the weeds with desperate clutch, and,
with only his head out of water, gaze up in Harry's stern eyes.

And they were stern, for strange thoughts had intruded themselves,
seeming to take possession of the young man's mind, and making him speak
and act contrary to his wont.

At last he spoke, and the trembling wretch beneath him shivered and
uttered a despairing cry.

"How came you in the water?" said Harry sternly.