She lay exactly as she had been found, with clenched hands and shoeless feet, clad in a plain dress of serge, partly torn and eaten away. Round her shoulders were the remains of a valuable shawl, firmly secured by a large common shawl pin. Her head was bare, and the loose, fair hair, tangled and twisted in moist knots, hung around the disfigured lineaments of a skeletonian face. So horrible was this face, so unrecognisable in its lost humanity, that Sutherland almost swooned as he looked upon it. Alas, what likeness of living flesh and blood could he discover there? ‘She must have been drifting up and down for weeks,’ said the sergeant with professional stolidity; ‘and I suppose last night’s high tide brought her up this way, and carried her into the shallows. There isn’t much remaining of the poor creature except clothes, sir; and her own father could scarcely know her. Seems to have been a fine woman, and quite young, though it’s hard to tell even that.’ There’s a ring on her finger,’ cried Sutherland--‘a wedding-ring?’ ‘Yes,’ returned the sergeant, ‘and I understand the missing lady was married. But I shouldn’t go too much by that, sir. Most of the unfortunates who make a hole in the water wear wedding-rings. But these bracelets now, there’s no mistaking _them_. Just look, sir.’ As he spoke, the sergeant took from a slab at the corpse’s side one or two elegant bracelets, greatly tarnished by the water, but of solid gold. ‘We took them off and had them cleaned for identification; they were in a shocking state, sir, and had worked right into the bone.’ Sutherland took the bracelet, and uttered a horrified exclamation, as he deciphered, cut clearly on the solid surface, these words-- To Dear Madeline. A birthday gift from her sister, --Margaret Forster. At that very moment, as Sutherland stood looking at the bracelets and feeling his heart turn sick within him, a figure flitted in through the open door, and, pushing the two other men aside, gazed on the corpse with a face almost as terrible, almost as ghastly, as its own. The inquiry officer recognised James Forster in a moment, and made a movement as if to intercept his view of the dead woman, but in an instant he was on his knees, gazing wildly into the cold disfigured face, and stretching out his arms in horrified entreaty and recognition. ‘Madeline! My darling!’ The wild cry rang out in the desolate place, with a tone of infinite agony and woe. CHAPTER XXXIX.--DUST TO DUST.