Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/144

136 her eyebrows and lashes, of a deep brown that seemed almost black. Her lips were blue with the cold, just now: but the contrast between her eyebrows and her pale face and yellow hair struck me at once and kept me wondering: until Obed startled me by dropping the shawl and falling on his knees beside her. "Good God, Dom!" he sang out: "the girl's alive!"

The next moment, of course, I was as wild as he. "Get her out, then," I cried, "and up to the house at once!" "I can't loosen the man's arms!" Though less than a yard apart, we both shouted at the top of our voices. "Nonsense!" I answered: but it was true all the same—as I found out when I stepped in to Obed's help. "We must carry up the pair as they are," I said. "There's no time to lose."

We lifted them out, and making a chair of our hands and wrists, carried them up to Vellingey; leaving the others in the boat, now for an hour well above reach of the tide. And here I must tell of something that happened on the way: the first sign of Obed's madness, as I may call it. All of a sudden he stopped and panted, from the weight of our load, I supposed. "Dom," he said, "I believe that nine men out of ten would kiss her!"

I told him not to be a fool, and we walked on. In the town-place we happened on the shepherd, Reuben Santo, and sent him off for help,