Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/294

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286
OLD FIRES AND PROFITABLE GHOSTS

other, and stood on the footbridge talking together for a good three minutes.

Then to our infinite relief they parted with a "So long!" and each made slowly off by the way he had come. It was just a meeting of the patrols after all.

Another ten minutes must have gone by before we dared to lift the body again: and after a nervous while in crossing the beach we found the boat left high and dry by the ebb, and had an interminable job to get her down to the water without noise. I climbed in and took the oars: the Vicar lifted a sizeable stone on board and followed.

"The Carracks," he whispered. "That's the spot he named to me."

So I pulled out towards the Carracks, which are three points of rock lying just within the main barrier of Menawhidden, where it breaks up towards its western end into a maze of islets. While I pulled, the Vicar knelt on the bottom-boards and made fast the stone to John Emmet's feet.

Well, I need not tell the rest of our adventure at length. We reached the Carracks, and there the Vicar pulled out a short surplice from the immense inner pocket of his pea-jacket, donned it, and read the burial service in due form by the light of his dark lantern: and by the light of it, as I arranged John Emmet's shroud, I had my first and last glimpse of his face—a thin face, old and hollow, with grey side-whiskers: a face extraordinarily pallid: in other