and green, the home of the eyeless things which had devoured all that
had covered and filled that rattling symbol of man's mortality; then
fell to wondering if any one had attempted to leap the Strid of late. It
was covered with slime; he had never seen it look so treacherous.

[Footnote 1:
"This striding place is called the 'Strid,'
A name which it took of yore;
A thousand years hath it borne the name,
And it shall a thousand more."
]

He shuddered and turned away, impelled, despite his manhood, to flee the
spot. As he did so, something tossing in the foam below the
fall--something as white, yet independent of it--caught his eye and
arrested his step. Then he saw that it was describing a contrary motion
to the rushing water--an upward backward motion. Weigall stood rigid,
breathless; he fancied he heard the crackling of his hair. Was that a
hand? It thrust itself still higher above the boiling foam, turned
sidewise, and four frantic fingers were distinctly visible against the
black rock beyond.

Weigall's superstitious terror left him. A man was there, struggling to
free himself from the suction beneath the Strid, swept down, doubtless,
but a moment before his arrival, perhaps as he stood with his back to
the current.

He stepped as close to the edge as he dared. The hand doubled as if in
imprecation, shaking savagely in the face of that force which leaves its
creatures to immutable law; then spread wide again, clutching,