And then it was that, as the vision of sudden death glared out before his eyes, and the horror of it leapt upon him, that a scream--a loud, wild, echoing scream, which sounded strange in that lonely place, and rose above the rude song that the wind was now singing,--broke from his blanched lips. And another, and another, and then silence; for Kenrick was now crouching at the cliff's foot furthest off from the swelling flood, with his eyes fixed motionless in a wild stare on its advancing line of foam. He was conjuring up before his imagination the time when those waves should have reached him; should have swept him away from the shelter of the shore, or risen above his lips; should have forced him again to struggle and swim, until his strength, already impaired by hunger, and thirst, and cold, and fatigue, should have failed him altogether, and he would sink, and the water gurgle wildly in his ears, and stop his breath--and all would be still. And when he had pictured this scene to himself with a vividness which made him experience all its agony, for a time his mind flew back through all the faultful past up to that very day; memory lighted her lantern, and threw its blaze on every dark corner, on every hidden recess, every forgotten nook--left no spot unsearched, unilluminated with sudden flash; all his past sins were before him, words, looks, thoughts, everything. As when a man descends with a light in his diving-bell into the heaving sea, the strange monsters of the deep, attracted by the unknown glimmer, throng and wallow terribly around him, so did uncouth thoughts and forgotten sins welter in fearful multitudes round this light of memory in the deep sea of that poor human soul. And finally, as though in demon voices, came this message whispered to him, touted to him tauntingly, rising and falling with maddening alternation on the rising and falling of the wind--"You have been wasting your life, moodily abandoning yourself to idle misery, neglecting your duties, letting your talents rust--_God will take from you the life you know not how to use_." And then, as though in answer to this, another voice, low, soft, sweet, that his heart knew well--another voice filling the interspaces of the others with unseen music, whispered to him soothingly--"It shall be given you again, use it better; awake, use it better, _it shall be given you again_."