have
belonged to some long-disused watering-place. All the time that the
two travellers sank from stage to stage of this downward journey, there
closed over their heads living bridges and caverns of the most varied
foliage, all of which grew greener, redder, or more golden, in the
growing sunlight of the morning. Life, too, of the more moving sort rose
at the sun on every side of them. Birds whirred and fluttered in the
undergrowth, as if imprisoned in green cages. Other birds were shaken
up in great clouds from the tree-tops, as if they were blossoms detached
and scattered up to heaven. Animals which Turnbull was too much of a
Londoner and MacIan too much of a Northerner to know, slipped by among
the tangle or ran pattering up the tree-trunks. Both the men, according
to their several creeds, felt the full thunder of the psalm of life as
they had never heard it before; MacIan felt God the Father, benignant
in all His energies, and Turnbull that ultimate anonymous energy, that
_Natura Naturans_, which is the whole theme of Lucretius. It was down
this clamorous ladder of life that they went down to die.

They broke out upon a brown semicircle of sand, so free from human
imprint as to justify Turnbull's profession. They strode out upon
it, stuck their swords in the sand, and had a pause too important
for speech. Turnbull eyed the coast curiously for a moment, like one
awakening memories of childhood; then he said abruptly, like a man
remembering somebody's name: "But, of course, we shall be better off
still round the corner of Cragness Point; nobody ever comes there at
all." And picking up his sword again, he began striding towards a big
bluff of the rocks which stood out upon their left. MacIan followed him
round the corner and found himself in what was certainly an even finer
fencing court, of flat, firm sand, enclosed on three sides by white
walls of rock, and on the fourth by the green wall of the advancing sea.

"We are quite safe here," said Turnbull, and, to the other's surprise,
flung himself down, sitting on the brown beach.

"You see, I was brought up near here," he explained. "I was sent from
Scotland to stop with my aunt. It is highly probable that I may die
here. Do you mind if I light a pipe?"

"Of course, do whatever you like," said MacIan, with a choking voice,
and he went and walked alone by himself along the wet, glistening sands.

Ten minutes afterwards he came back again, white with his own whirlwi