End of the Twenty-four Hours 445

“OQ Lord!” Peter Tosh cried, “lift the mist,
for it’s mair than we can bear.”

The mist rose slowly, and those who had
courage to look saw Gavin praying with the earl.
Many could not look, and some of them did not
even see Rob Dow jump.

For it was Dow, the man with the crushed leg,
who saved Gavin’s life, and flung away his own
for it. Suddenly he was seen on the edge of the
bank, holding one end of the improvised rope in
his hand. As Tosh says:

“Tt all happened in the opening and shutting
o’ aneye. It’s a queer thing to say, but though
I prayed to God to take awa the mist, when He
did raise it | couldna look. I shut my een tight,
and held my arm afore my face, like ane feared 0’
being struck. Even when I daured to look, my
arm was shaking so that I could see Rob both
above it and. belowit. He was on the edge,
crouching to leap. I didna see wha had haud o’
the other end o’ the rope. I heard the minister
cry, ‘No, Dow, no!’ and it gae through me as
quick as a stab that if Rob jumped he would
Knock them both into the water. But he did
jump, and you ken how it was that he didna
knock them off.”

It was because he had no thought of saving his
own life. He jumped, not at the island, now
little bigger than the seat of a chair, but at the
edge of it, into the foam, and with his arm out-
stretched. For a second the hand holding the
rope was on the dot of land. Gavin tried to
seize the hand; Rintoul clutched the rope. The
earl and the minister were dragged together into