'
'But, Winifred, they are NOT so cursed,' I cried. 'It is all a
hideous superstition: one of Man's idiotic lies!'
'Henry,' said she, shocked at my irreverence, 'it _is_ so; the Bible
says it, and all life shows it. Ah! I wonder what wretch committed
the sacrilege, and why he had no pity on his poor innocent children!'
While she was talking, I stooped and picked up the casket from which
the letters had been forced by the fall. She had not seen it. I put
it in my pocket.
'Henry, I am so grieved for you,' said Winifred again, and she came
and wound her fingers in mine.
Grieved for _me_! But where was her father's dead body? That was the
thought that appalled me. Should we come upon it in the _debris_?
What was to be done? Owing to the tide, there was no turning back now
to Flinty Point. The projecting debris must be passed. There was no
dallying for a moment. If we lingered we should be caught by the tide
in Mousetrap Cove, and then nothing could save us. Suppose in passing
the _debris_ we should come upon her father's corpse.
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