The north wind had done work during the night, and the embedded slab was clear now; more than clear. It formed part of a stone coffin whence the wind had driven the sand, leaving the contents exposed to view. Only a few bones, but, backed by the drifted sand, they still kept the semblance of a skeleton sitting staring out into the mist. Eustace Gordon recoiled--the best of men would have done so much in such a situation; then memory aided him. "It is Eilean-a-fa-ash, Maud--Eilean-a-varai--you remember. We must have drifted north somehow. Don't look so scared, my darling. It is only Eilean-a-fa-ash--the Island of Rest--that is all." She did not heed him; her eyes, full of an almost insane terror, were fastened on the fleshless hand which lay so near--oh! God in heaven!--so near her own as it clutched the side of the coffin. "The ring," she whispered. "Look! look--the ring, my ring, my ring." Yes! on the dead as on the living hand he saw the ring with its legend, "Beautiful, constant, chaste." A chill came over even his passion; yet he turned to her with sudden petulance. "Well! what then?--you know whence it must have come, what it must have been from the beginning, I suppose. Come! let us leave these horrors, let us leave the past and be sensible. Come, Maud." She gave him one look,--a look he never forgot,--and with a cry of "Rick's ring! Rick's ring!" broke from him and disappeared into the mist. "Maud! Maud! don't be silly! Maud! where are you going? For God's sake, Maud! come back. The mist--the sea--are you mad? Maud! Maud!" Then he, too, was blotted out, and the growing light of day found nothing human there save the bones of a woman who had been loved. Nothing but that and the ashes of a fire which had gone out. "Maud! Maud!" The cry hit on the mist and came echoing back to him, as, following her faint footsteps, he pursued her. Once looming through the fog he thought he saw her pausing as for breath, but his passionate entreaty for her to wait for him, his eager reminder that he was Eustace--Eustace, her lover--brought no response. Did he imagine a faint cry as if she started off in renewed alarm, or was it only some sea-bird hidden in the mist, uttering its plaintive note? He brought himself up suddenly with a gasp of horrid fears as his feet gave way beneath him--deeper? deeper? No! that was right: firm ground once more, but where was he? Where were those faint footmarks leading him?