om to the corner where his rapier lay, picked it up
softly and as softly stole up behind me. I tried to shout, to warn
myself; but my tongue was tied. The brother's arm was lifted. The
candlelight ran along the blade. Still the kneeling figure never
turned.

And as my heart stiffened and awaited it, there came a flash of pain--
one red-hot stroke of anguish.

III.

WHAT I SAW IN THE TARN.

As the steel entered my back, cutting all the cords that bound me to
life, I suffered anguish too exquisite for words to reach, too deep for
memory to dive after. My eyes closed and teeth shut on the taste of
death; and as they shut a merciful oblivion wrapped me round.

When I awoke, the room was dark, and I was standing on my feet. A cold
wind was blowing on my face, as from an open door. I staggered to meet
this wind and found myself groping along a passage and down a staircase
filled with Egyptian darkness. Then the wind increased suddenly and
shook the black curtain around my senses. A murky light broke in on me.
I had a body. That I felt; but where it was I knew not. And so I felt
my way forward in the direction where the twilight showed least dimly.

Slowly the curtain shook and its folds dissolved as I moved against the
wind. The clouds lifted; and by degrees I grew aware that I was
standing on the barren moor. Night was stretched around to the horizon,
where straight ahead a grey bar shone across the gloom. I pressed on
towards it. The heath was uneven under my feet, and now and then I
stumbled heavily; but still I held on. For it seemed that I must get to
this grey bar or die a second time. All my muscles, all my will, were
strained upon this purpose.

Drawing nearer, I observed that a wave-like motion kept passing over
this brighter space, as it had passed over the mirror. The glimmer
would be obscured for a moment, and then re-appear. At length a gentle
acclivity of the moor hid it for a while. My legs positively raced up
this slope, and upon the summit I hardly dared to look for a moment,
knowing that if the light were an illusion all my hope must die with it.

But it was no illusion. There was the light, and there, before my feet,
lay a sable sheet of water, over the surface of which the light was
playing. There was no moon, no star in heaven; yet over this desolate
tarn hovered a pale radiance that ceased again where the edge of its
waves lapped the further bank of peat. Their monot