He pointed to an indistinct mass bearing down upon the Bridge House. It was a big shed that had been carried away, and, jammed between timbers, had not broken up. There was no time for warning. It came on swiftly, heavily. There was a strange, horrible, grinding sound, and then they saw the light of that one room move on, waving a little to and fro-on to the rapids, the cohorts of logs crowding hard after.
Where the light was two men had started to their feet when the crash came. They felt the House move. “Run-save yourself!” cried the old man quietly. “We are lost!”
The floor rocked.
“Go,” he said again. “I will stay with her.”
“She is mine,” Brydon said; and he took her in his arms. “I will not go.”
They could hear the rapids below. The old man steadied himself in the deep water on the floor, and caught out yearningly at the cold hands.
“Come close, come close,” said Brydon. “Closer; put your arms round her.”
The old man did so. They were locked in each other’s arms—dead and living.
The old man spoke, with a piteous kind of joy: “We therefore commit her body to the deep—!”
The three were never found.