od before me, upon the
grave of that boy."

"You imagined it," muttered Uniacke.

He spoke without conviction.

"I did not. I saw it. For now I knew that I was no longer thinking of my
picture. I looked around me and saw the small clouds and the night, the
moon in the pale sky, the black church, this house, the graves like
creatures lying side by side asleep. I saw them all. I heard the dull
wash of the sea. And then I looked again at that grave, and on it stood
Jack, the dead thing I sent to death, bloated and silent, staring upon
me. Silent--and yet I seemed to feel that it said, 'This is what I am.
Paint me like this. Look at what the sea has done to me! Look--look at
what the sea has done!'--Uniacke! Uniacke!"

He sank down into a chair and stared before him with terrible eyes. A
shudder ran over the clergyman, but he said, in a voice that he tried to
make calm and consolatory,

"Of course it was your fancy, Sir Graham. You had conjured up the
figures in your picture. There was nothing unnatural in your seeing
one--the one you had known in life--more distinctly than the others."

"I had not known it like that. I had never imagined anything so
distorted, so horrible, tragic and yet almost grotesque, a thing for
the foolish to--to laugh at, ugh! Besides, it stood there. It was
actually there on that grave, as if it had risen out of that grave,
Uniacke."

"Your fancy."

Uniacke spoke with no conviction, and his lips were pale.

"I say it is not. The thing--Jack, come to that!--was there. Had you
been with me, you must have seen it as I did."

Uniacke shook his head.

"Believe me, Sir Graham," he exclaimed, "you ought to go from here. The
everlasting sound of the sea--the presence of the Skipper--your idea for
this terrible picture--"

"Terrible! Yes, I see it must be terrible. My conception--how wrong it
was! I meant to make death romantic, almost beautiful. And it is like
that. To-morrow--to-morrow--ah, Jack! I can paint you now!"

He sprang up and hurried from the room. Uniacke heard him pacing up and
down above stairs till far into the night.

The clergyman was deeply and sincerely religious, but he was in nowise a
superstitious man. Association with Sir Graham, however, and the
circumstances attendant upon that association, had gradually unnerved
him. He was now a prey to fear, almost to horror. Was it possible, he
thought, as he sat listening to that eternal footfall overhead, that
Providence pe