conceal from me, for my own sake merely, the evidence afforded by the scroll that my father’s tomb had been violated.  She recalled my seeing the parchment and being thrown thereby into a state of the greatest mental agony.  She recalled my taking her hand as we neared the new tongue of land made by the debris, and peering round it as though in dread of some concealed foe, but evidently she had no idea of what was behind there.  She described the way in which my ‘foot slipped on the sand,’ and how I was thrown back upon her as she stood waiting to pass the debris herself.  She spoke of my unaccountable and apparently mad suggestion that we should, although the tide was coming in, and we were already in danger of being imprisoned in the cove and drowned, sit down on the boulder made sacred to us both by our childish betrothal.  She spoke of her own suspicion, and then her conviction, that some great calamity was threatening me on account of the violation of the tomb, and that the knowledge of this was governing all these strange movements of mine.  She reminded me of my telling her that the shriek we both heard at the moment when the cliff fell was connected with the crime against my father, and that it was the call from the grave which, according to wild traditions, will sometimes come to the heir of an old family.  She recalled the very words I used when I told her that in answer to this call I intended to remain there until the tide came in and drowned me.  She dwelt upon the way in which I urged her to go and leave me, her own resolution to die with me, and her cutting up her shawl into a rope and tying herself to me.  She recalled the sudden thunderous noise of the settlement in response to the tide, and my springing up and running to the mass of debris and looking round it, and then my calling her to join me; and finally she described her running toward Needle Point in order to pass round it before the tide should get any higher, her plunging into the sea and my pulling her round the Point.

It was manifest, from the first word she uttered to the last, that she had no idea who was the ‘miscreant,’ to use her oft-repeated word, who committed the sacrilege; and nothing could express what relief this gave my heart.  I felt as though I had just escaped from some peril too dire to think of with calmness.

‘You remember, Henry,’ said she, ’how we ran to the cottage in our wet clothes.  You remember how we parted at the cottage door.  From that night till now we have never met, and now we meet—­here on Snowdon—­at the very llyn I was always so fond of.

’But tell me more, Winnie—­tell me what occurred to you on the next morning.’

‘Well,’ said she, ’I was always a sound sleeper, but my fatigue that night made me sleep until quite late the next morning.  I hurried up and got breakfast ready for father and myself.  I then went and rapped at his door, but I got no answer.  His room was empty.’