em, hailed Mr. Atkins, and said she was sure those boys
had seen something out of the common.

Mr. Atkins came up, and found the boys blubbering. He encouraged them,
and they told him a fearful thing had come up; it was like a man's head
and shoulders all scooped out and gnawed by the fishes, and had torn the
drags out of their hands.

Mr. Atkins made them tell him the exact place; and he was soon upon it
with his boat.

The water here was very deep; and though the boys kept pointing to the
very spot, the drags found nothing for some time.

But at last they showed, by their resistance, that they had clawed hold
of something.

"Draw slowly," said Mr. Atkins: "and, _if it is_, be men, and hold
fast."

The men drew slowly, slowly, and presently there rose to the surface a
Thing to strike terror and loathing into the stoutest heart.

The mutilated remains of a human face and body.

The greedy pike had cleared, not the features only, but the entire flesh
off the face; but had left the hair, and the tight skin of the forehead,
though their teeth had raked this last. The remnants they had left made
what they had mutilated doubly horrible; since now it was not a skull,
not a skeleton; but a face and a man gnawed down to the bones and hair
and feet. These last were in stout shoes, that resisted even those
voracious teeth; and a leathern stock had offered some little protection
to the throat.

The men groaned, and hid their faces with one hand, and pulled softly to
the shore with the other; and then, with half-averted faces, they drew
the ghastly remains and fluttering rags gently and reverently to land.

Mr. Atkins yielded to nature, and was violently sick at the sight he had
searched for so eagerly.

As soon as he recovered his powers, he bade the constables guard the
body (it was a body, in law), and see that no one laid so much as a
finger on it until some magistrate had taken a deposition. He also sent
a messenger to Mr. Houseman, telling him the _corpus delicti_ was found.
He did this, partly to show that gentleman he was right in his judgment,
and partly out of common humanity; since, after this discovery, Mr.
Houseman's client was sure to be tried for her life.

A magistrate soon came, and viewed the remains, and took careful notes
of the state in which they were found.

Houseman came, and was much affected both by the sight of his dead
friend, so mutilated, and by the probable consequences to Mrs. Gaunt.