"'Why do you hold me?' she screamed. 'Are you, too, leagued against us? Silvain! Silvain!'
"It needed all my strength to restrain her from rushing out in her wild delirium, perhaps to her destruction. I whispered to her hurriedly that I intended to go to the outer gallery, and that she should accompany me; and also that if she truly wished to be of assistance to her husband she must be calm. She ceased instantly to struggle, and said in a tone of suppressed excitement,
"'Come, then.'
"I did not quit my hold of her, but I used now only one hand, which I clasped firmly round her wrist, my other being required for the lantern. The next moment we were standing upon the gallery, bending over. It was pitch dark, and we could see nothing; even the white spray of the waves, as they dashed against the stone walls, was not visible to us; but we heard Silvain's voice, at intervals, appealing in frenzied tones to Kristel, who, it needed not the evidence of sight to know, was holding on to the chains and struggling with his brother. How the two came into that awful position was never discovered, and I could only judge by inference that Kristel, in the dead of this deadly night, had made his way by some means to the lighthouse, and was endeavouring to effect an entrance, when Silvain, awakened by his attempts, had gone out to him, and was instantly seized and dragged down.
"So fearful and confused were the minutes that immediately followed that I have but an indistinct impression of the occurrences of the time, which will live ever within me as the most awful in my life. I know that I never lost my grasp of Avicia, and that but for me she would have flung herself over the walls; I know that the brothers were engaged in a struggle for life and death, and that Silvain continued to make the most pathetic appeals to Kristel to listen to him, and not to stain his soul with blood; I know that in those appeals there were the tenderest references to their boyhood's days, to the love which had existed between them, each for the other, to trivial incidents in their childhood, to their mother who worshipped them and was now looking down upon them, to the hopes in which they had indulged of a life of harmony and affection; I know that it struck me then as most terrible that during the whole of the struggle no word issued from Kristel's lips; I know that there were heartrending appeals from Avicia to Kristel to spare her husband, and that there were tender cries from her to Silvain, and from Silvain to her; I know that, finding a loose chain on the gallery, I lowered it to the combatants, and called out to Silvain--foolishly enough, in so far as he could avail himself of it--to release himself from his brother's arms and seize it, and that I and Avicia would draw him up to safety; I know that in one vivid flash of lightning I saw the struggling forms and the beautiful white spray of the waves; I know that Silvain's voice grew fainter and fainter until it was heard no more; I know that there was the sound of a heavy body or bodies falling into the sea, that a shriek of woe and despair clove my heart like a knife, and that Avicia lay in my arms moaning and trembling. I bore her tenderly into her room, and laid her on her bed.
"The storm ceased; no sound was heard without. The rising sun filled the eastern horizon with loveliest hues of saffron and crimson. The sea was calm; there was no trace of tempest and human agony. By that time Avicia was a mother, and lay with her babes pressed to her bosom. Silvain's fear was realised: he was the dead father of twin brothers.
"The assistant whom Avicia's father had engaged rowed me to the village, and there I enlisted the services of a woman, who accompanied me back to the lighthouse, and attended to Avicia. The mother lived but two days after the birth of her babes. Until her last hour she was delirious, but then she recovered her senses and recognised me.
"'My dear Silvain told me,' she said, in a weak, faint voice, 'that you would be a friend to our children. Bless the few moments remaining to me by assuring me that you will not desert them.'
"I gave her the assurance for which she yearned, and she desired me to call them by the names of Eric and Emilius. It rejoiced me that she passed away in peace; strange as it may seem, it was an inexpressible relief to her bruised heart that the long agony was over. Her last words were,
"'I trust you. God will reward you!'