All the wonders in their
short existence had culminated in this final wonder, this passing away
together from the world of Time. This strange voyage they had embarked
on--to where?

Now that the first terror was over they felt neither sorrow nor fear.
They were together. Come what might, nothing could divide them; even
should they sleep and never wake up, they would sleep together. Had one
been left and the other taken!

As though the thought had occurred to them simultaneously, they turned
one to the other, and their lips met, their souls met, mingling in one
dream; whilst above in the windless heaven space answered space with
flashes of siderial light, and Canopus shone and burned like the
pointed sword of Azrael.

Clasped in Emmeline's hand was the last and most mysterious gift of the
mysterious world they had known--the branch of crimson berries.

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

MAD LESTRANGE

They knew him upon the Pacific slope as "Mad Lestrange." He was not
mad, but he was a man with a fixed idea. He was pursued by a vision:
the vision of two children and an old sailor adrift in a little boat
upon a wide blue sea.

When the Arago, bound for Papetee, picked up the boats of the
Northumberland, only the people in the long-boat were alive. Le Farge,
the captain, was mad, and he never recovered his reason. Lestrange was
utterly shattered; the awful experience in the boats and the loss of
the children had left him a seemingly helpless wreck. The scowbankers,
like all their class, had fared better, and in a few days were about
the ship and sitting in the sun. Four days after the rescue the Arago
spoke the Newcastle, bound for San Francisco, and transshipped the
shipwrecked men.

Had a physician seen Lestrange on board the Northumberland as she lay
in that long, long calm before the fire, he would have declared that
nothing but a miracle could prolong his life. The miracle came about.

In the general hospital of San Francisco, as the clouds cleared from
his mind, they unveiled the picture of the children and the little
boat. The picture had been there daily, seen but not truly
comprehended; the horrors gone through in the open boat, the sheer
physical exhaustion, had merged all the accidents of the great disaster
into one mournful half-comprehended fact. When his brain cleared all
the other incidents fell out of focus, and memory, with her eyes set
upon the children, began to paint a picture that he was ever