The Sergeant kindly lifted me up, and turned me away from the sight of the place where she had perished.

With that relief, I began to fetch my breath again, and to see things about me, as things really were.  Looking towards the sand-hills, I saw the men-servants from out-of-doors, and the fisherman, named Yolland, all running down to us together; and all, having taken the alarm, calling out to know if the girl had been found.  In the fewest words, the Sergeant showed them the evidence of the footmarks, and told them that a fatal accident must have happened to her.  He then picked out the fisherman from the rest, and put a question to him, turning about again towards the sea:  “Tell me,” he said.  “Could a boat have taken her off, in such weather as this, from those rocks where her footmarks stop?”

The fisherman pointed to the rollers tumbling in on the sand-bank, and to the great waves leaping up in clouds of foam against the headlands on either side of us.

“No boat that ever was built,” he answered, “could have got to her through that.”

Sergeant Cuff looked for the last time at the foot-marks on the sand, which the rain was now fast blurring out.

“There,” he said, “is the evidence that she can’t have left this place by land.  And here,” he went on, looking at the fisherman, “is the evidence that she can’t have got away by sea.”  He stopped, and considered for a minute.  “She was seen running towards this place, half an hour before I got here from the house,” he said to Yolland.  “Some time has passed since then.  Call it, altogether, an hour ago.  How high would the water be, at that time, on this side of the rocks?” He pointed to the south side—­otherwise, the side which was not filled up by the quicksand.

“As the tide makes to-day,” said the fisherman, “there wouldn’t have been water enough to drown a kitten on that side of the Spit, an hour since.”

Sergeant Cuff turned about northward, towards the quicksand.

“How much on this side?” he asked.

“Less still,” answered Yolland.  “The Shivering Sand would have been just awash, and no more.”

The Sergeant turned to me, and said that the accident must have happened on the side of the quicksand.  My tongue was loosened at that.  “No accident!” I told him.  “When she came to this place, she came weary of her life, to end it here.”

He started back from me.  “How do you know?” he asked.  The rest of them crowded round.  The Sergeant recovered himself instantly.  He put them back from me; he said I was an old man; he said the discovery had shaken me; he said, “Let him alone a little.”  Then he turned to Yolland, and asked, “Is there any chance of finding her, when the tide ebbs again?” And Yolland answered, “None.  What the Sand gets, the Sand keeps for ever.”  Having said that, the fisherman came a step nearer, and addressed himself to me.