Immediately after having taken his sheep back to the barn, the child had eaten his lunch and had gone down to bathe in company with a comrade. But scarcely had he put foot in the water than he fell and was drowned. At his comrade's cries, someone had run from the house built on the cliffs, and had drawn him out half-dead, without getting wet above the knees. He had lowered the head to cause vomiting, had shaken him, but uselessly. And, so as to illustrate just where the poor little fellow had gone down, the man picked up a stone and threw it into the sea.
"There, just there—three arms' length from the shore."
The calm sea breathed softly near the head of the little corpse. But the sun blazed on the beach; and, in presence of this pallid corpse, there seemed something implacable in that burning sky and these coarse witnesses.
George asked:
"Why don't you carry him into the shade, to a house, a bed?"
"He mustn't be moved," replied the guardian sententiously. "Until the arrival of the Authorities, he must not be moved."
"But, at least, carry him into the shade—there, under that embankment."
Obstinately, the guardian repeated:
"He must not be moved."
And nothing could be more sad than that frail, lifeless creature, stretched on the strand, and guarded by that impassive brute, who always repeated the same tale in the same words, who always made the same motion when throwing the stone into the sea.