the sea, whose low murmur the solemn stillness of the men, so loud a few minutes before, rendered more impressive. The silence was only broken every now and then by the increasingly painful groans of the dying man, or by an outburst of sparks, as some remnants of the woodwork within the hut, or rather the cleft that it formerly occupied, fell in.
After a few minutes, the priest beckoned me to approach. He had, according to his apprehension of the duties of his calling, endeavored, before all things, to awaken the feeble consciousness of the expiring sinner to the necessity of preparing for death after the manner of the Catholic Church, as far as it was possible to do so under such circumstances. But when this was over, he was anxious to make an attempt to elicit some words which might lead to the discovery of the murderer; and it was with this view that he wished to have me both as assistant and witness—and also called old Salaun.
The dying man's words were for the most part incoherent, and spoken in an unintelligible voice; but, however, such as they were, they tended to confirm a suspicion that had already crossed my mind, and led me to connect the mysterious presence in the hut, of the youth called Bauzec, on the occasion of my first visit, with the apparition I had just witnessed on the rocks above. In the mind of the dying man, shaken as it was by the
