dragging it up with all my might. I spoke, I cried aloud, but
there was no answer. I was alone in the pitchy darkness with my
burden, and the house was five hundred yards away. Struggling
still, I felt the ground beneath my feet, I saw a ray of moonlight-
-the grotto widened, and the deep water became a broad and shallow
brook as I stumbled over the stones and at last laid Margaret's
body on the bank in the park beyond.

"Aye, Willie, as the clock struck!" said the voice of Judith, the
Welsh nurse, as she bent down and looked at the white face. The
old woman must have turned back and followed us, seen the accident,
and slipped out by the lower gate of the garden. "Aye," she
groaned, "you have fed the Woman of the Water this night, Willie,
while the clock was striking."

I scarcely heard her as I knelt beside the lifeless body of the
woman I loved, chafing the wet white temples and gazing wildly into
the wide-staring eyes. I remember only the first returning look of
consciousness, the first heaving breath, the first movement of
those dear hands stretching out toward me.


That is not much of a story, you say. It is the story of my life.
That is all. It does not pretend to be anything else. Old Judith
says my luck turned on that summer's night when I was struggling in
the water to save all that was worth living for. A month later
there was a stone bridge above the grotto, and Margaret and I stood
on it and looked up at the moonlit Castle, as we had done once
before, and as we have done many times since. For all those things
happened ten years ago last summer, and this is the tenth Christmas