He started off on a run, and I followed him. He kept to the banks,
poking with a stick among the sandy bays and caves and little
back-waters, myself always close on his heels.

"Ah!" he exclaimed presently, "ah!"

The tone of his voice somehow brought back to me a vivid sense of the
horror of the last twenty-four hours, and I hurried up to join him. He
was pointing with his stick at a large black object that lay half in the
water and half on the sand. It appeared to be caught by some twisted
willow roots so that the river could not sweep it away. A few hours
before the spot must have been under water.

"See," he said quietly, "the victim that made our escape possible!"

And when I peered across his shoulder I saw that his stick rested on the
body of a man. He turned it over. It was the corpse of a peasant, and
the face was hidden in the sand. Clearly the man had been drowned but a
few hours before, and his body must have been swept down upon our island
somewhere about the hour of the dawn--_at the very time the fit had
passed_.

"We must give it a decent burial, you know."

"I suppose so," I replied. I shuddered a little in spite of myself, for
there was something about the appearance of that poor drowned man that
turned me cold.

The Swede glanced up sharply at me, and began clambering down the bank.
I followed him more leisurely. The current, I noticed, had torn away