The man played out the
chain; Harper stared at the seething, tumbling water, but Ransom looked
another way. The torture in his soul was taking shape, the shape of a
ghost rising from those tossing waters. Suddenly the pent-in breath of
fifty breasts found its way again to the lips.
The men who held the chain were pulling it in with violent reaches. It
dragged more slowly, stuck, loosened itself, and finally brought into
sight a face white as the foam it rose amongst.
"Dead! Drowned!" the whisper went around.
But when Hazen was dragged ashore and Ransom had thrown himself at his
feet, he saw that he yet lived, and lived triumphantly. Ransom could not
have told more; it was for others to see and point out the smile that
sweetened the wan lips, and the passion with which he held against his
breast some sodden and shapeless object which he had rescued from those
awful depths, and which, when spread out and clean of sand, betrayed
itself as that peculiar article of woman's clothing, a small side bag.
"I remember that bag," said Harper. "I saw it, or one exactly like it, in
Mrs. Ransom's hand when she got into the coach the day we all rode up
from the ferry. What will he have to say about it? and could he have seen
the body from which it has evidently been torn?"
CHAPTER XXVI
HAZEN
"An unfathomable man," grumbled Mr.
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