How long they urged that ghostly chase it would not be easy to say: they could form no judgment of the time. But at last Dennie caught sight of what appeared to be a ruddy flame on a low island in the muddy flood, some distance in advance. Neither of the paddlers was quite positive that it was a real flame, but they put new vigor into their strokes, and hallooed again. Once more, no answer. Still, the flame grew more distinct. The canoe swept rapidly forward and rubbed against the roots and sediment of the tiny island. No other boat was moored there, but the fire flickered and spurted up more vividly. Beside it they beheld Sylv, haggard, inert, and seemingly unconscious of their approach. "Sylv! Sylv!" cried Dennie. "What are you doing here?" Lance demanded. Sylv shrank back, then started to his feet; the flame-light--looking so garish in that gloomy place--thrown upward on to his wan checks in such wise as to make them seem more hollow than they were in fact. "I came here to die," he answered, without emotion. "Why did you follow me? It would have been over before long." They heard the booming of the storm-wind in the trees overhead, like the groan of some remote unknown multitude of sufferers; and it chimed in well with the lonely reverberation of his voice. "It is over now!" Lance exclaimed. "Don't you see that we won't let you die? It was mad of you to think of such a thing, Sylv!" Dennie drew close to his brother swiftly, and put his arm around him, as though to guard him from an unseen enemy. "Sylv," he said, "it ar' all fixed and done. Deely loves ye--she have told me--and I see that I ain't the one for her. I'm clean done with all that ar foolishness, Sylv, and I told her she'd got to marry ye, anyhow. Steady away now, Sylv. D'ye listen to me?" The burly, red-bearded brother slid his hands down the arms of the slender, dark-haired one, and held him as if he feared that he might still break away and escape. Lance, looking on, thought he had never seen anything more tender, more brave and manly, than Dennie's expression and attitude. He had never, he thought, heard finer sweetness in a man's voice than came from Dennie's lips. Sylv broke down. "Dennie, boy," he cried; and then paused, choking. "Dear old Dennie!" (His brother winced at that unconscious repetition of Adela's phrase.) "I never thought this would come! I was true when I said I did not love her. I couldn't know what it would be like, then. But, you see, I tried to get out of the way. Oh, why didn't you let me die here!" The morbid mood which had impelled him to the resource of slow suicide, by starvation in the swamp, could not at once be dispelled; but by dint of soothing words and of reminders that they must lose no time in getting back to the outer world, the two allies prevailed over Sylv's melancholy. "Where's your boat?" asked Lance. "I set it adrift," was the answer.