A cry of horror from Raby!  He had found the body of a woman floating in a pool of the river, head downward.

He dashed into the water directly and drew it to the bank; Dr. Amboyne helped him, and they got it out on dry land.  The face was ghastly, the body still.

“Turn her face downward,” said Amboyne, “give her every chance.  Carry her gently.”

One took the shoulders, the other the feet; they carried her slowly in and laid her gently down before the fire.

She lay like dripping marble.

Her clothes clinging tightly round her, revealed her marvelous form and limbs of antique mold—­but all so deadly still.

Amboyne kneeled over her, searching, in vain, for some sign of life.  He groaned.

“Oh!” said he, “is it possible that such a creature as this can be cut off in its prime?”

“Dead!” cried Raby, trembling all over.  “Oh, God forbid!  One of her ancestors saved a Raby’s life in battle, another saved a Raby in a foaming flood; and I couldn’t save her in a dead pool!  She is the last of that loyal race, and I’m the last Raby.  Farewell, Dence!  Farewell, Raby!”

While he bemoaned her thus, and his tears actually dripped upon her pale face, Amboyne detected a slight quivering in the drowned woman’s throat.

“Hush?” said he to Raby.

There was a pair of old-fashioned bellows by the side of the fire; Amboyne seized them, and opened Jael’s mouth with more ease than he expected.  “That is a good sign,” said he.

He inflated the bellows, and inserted the tube very carefully; then he discharged the air, then gently sucked it back again.  When he had done this several times something like a sigh escaped from Jael’s breast.  The doctor removed the bellows, and felt her heart and examined her eyes.  “Curious!” said he.  “Give me some brandy.  It is more like syncope than drowning.”

Acting on this notion, he laid her flat on her back, and applied neat brandy to her nostrils and ears.

After a while she moved her whole body like a wounded snake, and moaned feebly.

Raby uttered a loud shout of joy.  “She is saved!” he cried.  “She is saved!” He jumped about the room like a boy, and, anxious to do something or other, was for ringing up the female servants.  But Amboyne would not hear of it.  “On the contrary,” said he, “lock the door, and let only you and I see the poor girl’s distress when she comes back to this bitter world.  Raby, don’t you shut your eyes to the truth.  This was no accident.”

“I am afraid not,” said Raby.  “She knows the water as well as I do, and she picked out the deepest hole:  poor girl! poor girl”

He then asked Amboyne in a whisper what he thought she would do when she came to her senses.

“Impossible to say.  She may be violent, and if so we shall have enough to do to hold her.  They tell me she threw that workman like a sack.”