Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/170

 river. After two weeks of dry weather the water was falling. On the edge of the falls, rocks showed that a week before were under water. In eddies and shallow places he could see, as with his physical eye, drift and débris collecting, and sometimes in this drift and débris strange matter was thrown up. He had hesitated to do it, but he felt that he had no right to hesitate longer, and so he gave directions for a careful search of the river banks and shallow places from Millbank to Pishon's Ferry. It was the last chance, and he had refused to consider it until it would be criminal to refuse longer.

That was the physical part of the task, which he could set others to do; but there was another part, and that he took with him to his room in the hotel and spent much of the night with it. All the evening he turned and re-turned it, looking at every side and phase, and then went to bed and to sleep, with the knowledge that more than once that which the most earnest thought fails to unravel becomes by some strange alchemy clear under the magic of sleep. Would it be so with this?