towards the house. Lancelot, desperate, seized the bridge-rail,
tore it off by sheer strength, and hurled it far into the pool.
Argemone saw it, and remembered it, like a true woman. Ay, be as
Manichaean-sentimental as you will, fair ladies, physical prowess,
that Eden-right of manhood, is sure to tell upon your hearts!

Again the colonel's grizzled head reappeared,--and, oh joy! beneath
it a draggled knot of black curls. In another instant he had hold
of the rail, and quietly floating down to the shallow, dragged the
lifeless giant high and dry on a patch of gravel.

Honoria never spoke. She rose, walked quietly back along the beam,
passed Argemone and Lancelot without seeing them, and firmly but
hurriedly led the way round the pool-side.

Before they arrived at the bank, the colonel had carried Tregarva to
it. Lancelot and two or three workmen, whom his cries had
attracted, lifted the body on to the meadow.

Honoria knelt quietly down on the grass, and watched, silent and
motionless, the dead face, with her wide, awestruck eyes.

'God bless her for a kind soul!' whispered the wan weather-beaten
field drudges, as they crowded round the body.

'Get out of the way, my men!' quoth the colonel. 'Too many cooks
spoil the broth.' And he packed off one here and another there for
necessaries, and commenced trying every restorative means with the
ready coolness of a practised surgeon; while Lancelot, whom he
ordered about like a baby, gulped down a great choking lump of envy,