Death was still his subject; but it was no longer a bird he saw:  it was a very noble young man, and his white, dead face stared at the sky from the bottom of a deep pool.  I don’t know how he got there, but a woman who would not admire him had something to do with it.  No sun after rain had come into that tragic life.  To the water that had ended it his white face seemed to be saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”  It was the old story of a faithless woman.  He had given her his heart, and she had played with it.  For her sake he had striven to be famous; for her alone had he toiled through dreary years in London, the goal her lap, in which he should one day place his book—­a poor, trivial little work, he knew (yet much admired by the best critics).  Never had his thoughts wandered for one instant of that time to another woman; he had been as faithful in life as in death; and now she came to the edge of the pool and peered down at his staring eyes and laughed.

He had got thus far when a shout from Corp brought him, dazed, to his feet.  It had been preceded by another cry, as the boy and the sapling he was twisted round toppled into the river together, uprooted stones and clods pounding after them and discolouring the pool into which the torrent rushes between rocks, to swirl frantically before it dives down a narrow channel and leaps into another caldron.

There was no climbing down those precipitous rocks.  Corp was shouting, gesticulating, impotent.  “How can you stand so still?” he roared.

For Tommy was standing quite still, like one not yet thoroughly awake.  The boy’s head was visible now and again as he was carried round in the seething water; when he came to the outer ring down that channel he must infallibly go, and every second or two he was in a wider circle.

Tommy was awake now, and he could not stand still and see a boy drown before his eyes.  He knew that to attempt to save him was to face a terrible danger, especially as he could not swim; but he kicked off his boots.  There was some gallantry in the man.

“You wouldna dare!” Corp cried, aghast.

Tommy hesitated for a moment, but he had abundance of physical courage.  He clenched his teeth and jumped.  But before he jumped he pushed the glove into Corp’s hand, saying, “Give her that, and tell her it never left my heart.”  He did not say who she was; he scarcely knew that he was saying it.  It was his dream intruding on reality, as a wheel may revolve for a moment longer after the spring breaks.

Corp saw him strike the water and disappear.  He tore along the bank as he had never run before, until he got to the water’s edge below the Slugs, and climbed and fought his way to the scene of the disaster.  Before he reached it, however, we should have had no hero had not the sapling, the cause of all this pother, made amends by barring the way down the narrow channel.  Tommy was clinging to it, and the boy to him, and, at some risk, Corp got them both ashore, where they lay gasping like fish in a creel.