ladder. At last slowly and laboriously, foot by foot, they regained the bank.

“Here. You get outside a great toothful of this,” said Mervyn, producing the square whisky bottle which he had shoved hastily into his side pocket with an eye to just such a contingency, and had hurriedly deposited under a tree, when starting to venture upon the ice. “Then we’ll sprint as hard as we can for my diggings. Do as I say,” he added, sharply, as the other hesitated. “It may mean the difference between life and death.”

The stranger, who had seemed to hesitate, now obeyed, and took a liberal pull at the potent spirit. His rescuer followed his example.

“Here, take another pull,” urged the latter. “Nothing like it, on top of a freezing soak. Go ahead. It can’t hurt you under the circumstances.”

The stranger complied, and the effect was nearly instantaneous. His chattering teeth were stilled, and the awful numbness that held his frame, relaxed, as the generous warmth of the spirit ran through his veins. Still he did not speak. Mervyn eyed him critically.

“Come along,” he said. “My crib’s just handy. Sooner we get there the better, for I’m in as risky a state as you are. Man, but I’m just steaming with perspiration, and a chill upon that on an icy night like this—at my age—no thank you! Here—I’ll give you an arm. You must be clean played out.”

“I am,” said the other, speaking for the first time. But that was all he said. No words of thanks, of explanation. Mervyn passed a tolerably strong arm through that of his guest, and piloted him along the path beneath the trees, athwart whose frosted boughs the moon was networking in fitful strands of light. The ladder he did not trouble his head further about. It would be there in the morning. Two owls, floating over the tree-tops, hooted sepulchrally but melodiously to each other.

“That’s how I heard them when I was in there. They sounded like the voices of devils.”

Mervyn looked at the speaker curiously. They had nearly gained the gate which opened out of the sombre woods on to the sluice. The voice was rather deep, not unpleasing, but strained. Lord! what if a touch of brain fever followed on the strain of the long immersion? What on earth was he going to do with a raving delirious man, in his lonely, haunted abode? thought Mervyn.

“Oh, that’s how they struck you!” he answered, bluffly. “No ‘devil’ 

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