Another moment and a gasp went up from fifty or more throats.  Hazen had taken the chain in his hand, walked to the edge of the rock and slipped into the quietest water he saw there.

“Strike left!” called out a voice.  And he struck left.  The eddy seized him and they could see his head moving slowly about in the great circle which gradually grew smaller and smaller till he suddenly disappeared.  A groan muffled with horror went up from the shore.  But the man who held the chain lifted up his hand, and silence—­more pregnant of anticipation than any sound—­held that whole crowd rigid.  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. Harper, entering Mr. Ransom’s room in marked disorder.  “They say that he has not spoken yet; but the coroner is with him and we shall hear something from him soon.  I expect—­” here the lawyer’s voice changed and his manner took on meaning—­“that his report will be final.”

“Final?  You mean—­”

“What his fainting face showed.  For all its pallor and the exhaustion it expressed, there was triumph in its every feature.  The little bag was not all he saw in that pit of hell.  You must prepare yourself for no common ordeal, Ransom; it will take all your courage to listen to his story.”

“I know.”  The words came with difficulty but not without a certain manly courage.  “I shall try not to make you too much trouble.”  Then after a moment of oppressive silence, “Did you notice, when we all came in, the figure of a woman disappearing up the stair way?  It was Anitra’s and it paused before it reached the top, and I saw her eyes staring down at Hazen’s helpless figure with a wildness in its inquiry that has sapped all my courage.  How are we to answer that girl when she asks us what has happened?  How make her know that Hazen is her brother and that he has just risked his life to satisfy himself and us that Georgian was really lost in that dreadful pool.”