echoed by the  burden of the seas where 
they broke, wave upon wave, on the distant shore. 

He was silent ; and what other lips could tell the 
crime of his buried past ? None there. He had said, 
"Let the dead past bury its dead," and the dead 
speak not. 

Once only his face lost its enforced look of calm 
and grave  ; it was when her hand touched 
and lay within his. Then the ritual which was 
uttered was lost on his memory ; the wordnetanger that 
was around him grew unreal ; the surging of 
the seas beat and throbbed through his brain; his 
eyes shrank from the young loveliness beside him, 
and his voice, as it pledged her a husband's vows, 
sounded hollow in his ear. What he saw was the 
upward gaze of the dying man whom he had slaugh- 
tered, what he heard were the faint broken words, 
which, even in death, had forgiven him ; and for 
one instant on his face came that look, hunted, 
terrible, -stricken, which had come there when 
in the mists of the sunrise in the years long gone, 
he had read the message of the dead, the message 



186 STEATHMOEE. 

of pardoiij which had written him out for ever in 
his own sight a murderer. In