Ah, how sweet had existence become! and in one day he had compassed the happiness of a lifetime. It was only a few hours ago that Lewis was sailing past Deerchase so gaily, and Sylvia’s soft hair had been so lately blown in his face by summer breezes. Presently in the midst of the darkness and the wildness he again heard a cry; he recognised Lewis’s voice, faint as it was, and almost drowned by the clamour of the winds and the waves. Skelton then felt a presentiment that Lewis would be saved, although he himself would undoubtedly be lost. And then came the feeling that the mystery of life was to be solved. No matter now about all his thoughts, all his speculations; in one moment he would know more than all the world could teach him about those vast mysteries that subtle men try to fathom. Skelton was too sincere a man and too fearless to change wholly within the few awful moments of suspension between two worlds. One was gone from him already, the other was close at hand. But he had always firmly believed in a Great First Cause, a Supreme Being. This belief took on strangely the likeness of the Christian God, the Father, Friend, the Maker who orders things wisely for His creatures. Instinctively he remembered the proverb of the poor peasants: “The good God builds the blind bird’s nest.” “If there be such a God,” Skelton said to himself, “I adore Him.” The next moment he felt himself struggling in the water, with blackness around him and above him, and the wind roaring, and a weight of water like a million tons fell upon him, and he knew no more. Within an hour the tempest had gone down and the clouds were drifting wildly across the pale sky. Occasionally the moon shone fitfully. The banks of the river were patrolled by frightened and excited crowds of negroes, with Bulstrode and Blair and Mr. Conyers and one or two other white persons among them, all engaged in the terrible search for Skelton and Lewis. The wind had suddenly changed to exactly the opposite direction, and the tide was running in with inconceivable rapidity. The black mud of the river bottom near the shore, that had been drained of water, was now quickly covered. Lights were moving along the shore, boats were being rowed about the river, and cries resounded, those asking for information that the others could not give. Sylvia Shapleigh had spent most of the time on the wharf where Skelton had left her. The servants had got around her, begging her to go to the house, out of the storm. Like a person in a dream, she went and changed her dress, and watched with dazed eyes the fury of sky and air and water. She could not wait for the watchers on the shore to tell her what was going on upon the river, and went back obstinately to the wharf, in spite of the prayers and entreaties of the servants. She tried to persuade herself that she was watching for Skelton’s return, but in her inmost heart she felt she would never see him alive again.