the cave, which was overhung by creepers and matted grass; the stream
swept the boat downwards, and Ella, her heart beating so as almost to
stop her breath, mounted the steps slowly, slowly. She reached at last
the platform below the cave, and turning, gave a long gaze at the moonlit
country; 'her last,' she said; then she moved, and the cave hid her as
the water of the warm seas close over the pearl-diver.

"Just so the night before had it hidden Lawrence. And they never came
back, they two:--never, the people say. I wonder what their love has
grown to now; ah! they love, I know, but cannot find each other yet, I
wonder also if they ever will."

So spoke Hugh the white-haired. But he who sat over against him, a
soldier as it seemed, black-bearded, with wild grey eyes that his great
brows hung over far; he, while the others sat still, awed by some vague
sense of spirits being very near them; this man, Giles, cried out--"Never?
old Hugh, it is not so.--Speak! I cannot tell you how it happened, but I
know it was not so, not so:--speak quick, Hugh! tell us all, all!"

"Wait a little, my son, wait," said Hugh; "the people indeed said they
never came back again at all, but I, but I--Ah! the time is long past
over." So he was silent, and sank his head on his breast, though his old
thin lips moved, as if he talked softly to himself, and the light of past
days flickered in his eyes.

Meanwhile Giles sat with his hands clasped finger over finger, tightly,
"till the knuckles whitened;" his lips were pressed firmly together; his
breast heaved as though it would burst, as though it must be rid of its
secret. Suddenly he sprang up, and in a voice that was a solemn chant,
began: "In full daylight, long ago, on a slumberously-wrathful,