They walked on, Tom searching vigilantly all the thickets he passed, and Mellen looking around him in terror lest the dead body of his wife should appear and crush his last hope for ever. "She has been this way," said Tom, when they reached the pond. "See, that tuft of cat-tails has been broken. No, no, don't be afraid to look; see yonder where the bushes are swept down; she went away towards the shore." Mellen groaned aloud. This was his most terrible fear. They walked on, taking a path that curved round the bay, and leaving the shore tavern on the right, went down to the beach. It was now sunset, and a golden glow lay upon the waters till they broke along the beach like great waves of pearls and opals drifting over the Sound together, and melting in the sand. Near the two men was a winrow of black seaweed, on which great drops of spray were quivering. Something in the appearance of this dark mass arrested Tom's attention. He went up to the pile of weeds and kicked them apart; a dark sodden substance, compact and heavy, lay underneath. He took it in his hands, gave the weeds that clung to it a shake, and held it up. Mellen came forward, his white lips parted, his breath rising with pain. He reached forth his hand, but uttered no word. It was the ample shawl that Elizabeth had worn that night. CHAPTER LXXVIII. IN BENSON'S TAVERN. She was dead! That fiendish man had spoken the truth--Mellen believed it now. Elizabeth was dead, and he had killed her--that noble, grand woman, so resolute in her sacrifice, so determined to save that girl, to preserve him from the hardest shock to his honor and pride, had offered herself up to death, body and soul. Those few moments of conviction changed him more than many years would have done. The pride and anger which had helped to aid him in his first grief were gone now--he was the wronger--searching for the wife he had driven forth to perish. And she was dead! No clue--no hope! He did not touch the shawl, but leaving Tom Fuller, went back and sat down in Elsie's room, with the sick girl's delirious cries smiting his ear, and terrible images rising before his eyes of Elizabeth--dying, dead--drowned and dashed upon some lonely beach, with her cold, open eyes staring blankly in his face. Tom dropped the shawl in a wet mass at his feet, and walked away without attempting to detain or comfort the stricken husband. He too believed Elizabeth dead, and had no heart to offer consolation. Indeed, the pang of sorrow that this conviction brought took away his own strength. He walked on, over the wet sands of the beach, ready to cry out with the anguish of this sudden bereavement, when the figure of old Caleb Benson cast its long shadow on the shore. "Is that you, Mr. Fuller, and alone? I'm mighty pleased to find any one from the Cove--most of all you." "Do you want me for anything particular?" asked Tom in a husky voice; "if not I--I'm engaged just now."