“I had been so haunted by the remembrance of that right hand, pointing skyward from the sea, and now I was to receive a message, penned by those precious fingers, which should indeed point out a ray of hope in the black sky of my sunless future. “Nigel, do you remember?” The man in the chair slipped his brown hands into the pockets of his coat. He did not lift his eyes from the floor. “I remember nothing,” he said, very low. “Then I must shew you your letter, which no eye save my own has ever seen.” She unlocked the despatch-box, took from it a small jewel-case, opened this with a gold key hanging from a chain around her wrist; then, from a sealed envelope, drew some half-dozen sheets of closely written manuscript. Leaning forward, she held them toward him. Slowly, with evident reluctance, the lean brown hand came out of the coat pocket. He took them from her, and let his eyes rest on the first page. There followed moments of tense silence. The tall clock, in a corner of the room, ticked loudly. Out seaward, a nightbird screeched. An owl in the fir wood behind the house, hooted thrice. The fire fell together, and shot up tongues of flame. At last he lifted hunted eyes to her face. “It is my handwriting,” he said, “or something very like it. But it is dated August 12th, 1882, thirteen months before my birth.” “Read it,” said Lady Tintagel. “I cannot.” “You must.” She rose, placed a shaded electric lamp on the table at his elbow; then switched off all other lights. Seated in shadow on the couch, she watched the dark face, so fine in its stern intentness, bending over the paper; the strong, nervous hand waiting to turn each page; the dark hair, from which no cropping could cut the curl. “God in heaven,” she sighed, “he has come back to me in answer to the insistence of my frantic prayer; but he has returned emptied of all memory. Oh, of Thine infinite mercy, let there rise in his mind the floodtide of remembrance.” Thus she prayed and yearned and hoped, while the man in the chair slowly read the letter, written, in his own handwriting, a year before his birth. “_August 12th, 1882._ “MY OWN SWEET WIFE, “You and I are so full of happy, buoyant life, that it seems a strange anomaly that I should sit down to write to you of death: we are so intimately one in heart and mind, so wedded in each moment of our perfect life together, that there seems no need to face the possibility of parting. Yet, lately, there has come to me a chill presentiment that, in the very midst of life and joy, a sudden death may come with one swift stroke; that you and I, belovèd, counting on fifty blissful years together, may, in one fatal moment, be wrenched apart. “So I have made my will, leaving everything to you. All is in order. Fergusson will manage the estate. Thomas and his wife can be wholly trusted in the house. I leave my wife in faithful hands.