ngeways rested. The eyes of the
body were open and the lips were working, trying to say something. By
watching the lips he discovered that they kept on repeating, over and
over, one word; then he read that that word was _revenge_. "I cannot,
I cannot," he whispered. "I have promised God that I will not; and,
moreover, to take revenge on Spurling would be to remember her."

Was it that he moved as he slept, or did the thing which he thought he
saw actually occur! Some stones slipped from off the mound and, to his
eyes looking down into the grave, it seemed that Strangeways' hand
began to grope frantically after the locket which had been about his
neck, and that, finding it missing, his face became angry and he
strove to rise, causing the stones to fall and the ground to tremble.

Granger jumped up, and stood there shaking with his hands clenched and
his head thrown back, prepared.

"Will you answer me?" he cried in despair. "Don't you know how I
suffer? If you consent to what I have asked of you, give me a sign? If
nothing happens, I shall know that you are cruel and do not care."

When he had waited in vain some seconds, he lost his nerve and his
courage. Kneeling beside the grave he commenced to weep, smoothing the
stones with his hands coaxingly like a child, and whispering, "Give me
a sign. Give me a sign. Give me a sign."

Suddenly he paused in his pleading. The rustling of water against a
travelling prow, and sound of paddles thrust in, forced back, and
withdrawn, struck upon his ears. He threw himself full length along
the ground; he did not want to be discovered there. Stealing up-stream
from the northward, creeping close in to the opposite bank to avoid
the current, came a canoe, sitting deep in the water, heavily laden
with furs; the stern-paddle was held by a tall and thickly bearded
man, and in the prow, even at that distance and in that shadowy light,
it was possible to make out that the second figure was that of a girl.
Granger recognised them immediately, and knew that the Man with the
Dead Soul and his daughter had returned. He also noticed that Eyelids
was not there. They did not see him, but quickly vanished round the
bend.

When all was silent and lonely again, Granger arose. "It is a sign,"
he said. Standing above the grave, before departing he spoke once more
with the man who lay buried there. "Strangeways, you may rest quiet
now," he said. "Though I cannot revenge her as you have desired, we