her son. How I should have loved him then! I like him now very much;
but how I should have loved him then, for he is a brave boy. Oh, if I
had only been born brave like him!' Then, suddenly recollecting
himself, he closed his vest, and said: 'Don't tell your mother, Hal;
don't tell your mother that I have shown you this.' Then he took it
out again. 'She who is dead cherished it,' he continued, half to
himself--'she cherished it above all things. She died, boy, and I
couldn't help her. She used to wear the cross in the bosom of her
dress; and there she was in the cove kissing it when the tide swept
over her. I ought to have jumped down and died with her. _You_ would
have done it, Hal; your eyes say so. Oh, to be an Aylwin without the
Aylwin courage!'

After a little time he said: 'This has lain on her bosom, Hal, her
bosom! It has been kissed by her, Hal, oh, a thousand thousand times!
It had her last kiss. When I took it from the cold body which had
been recovered, this cross seemed to be warm with her life and love.'

And then he wept, and his tears fell thick upon his bosom and upon
the amulet. The truth was clear enough now. The appalling death of
his first wife, his love for her, and his remorse for not having
jumped down the cliff and died with her, had affected his brain. He
was a monomaniac, and all his thoughts were in some way clustered
round the dominant one. He had studied amulets because the 'Moonlight
Cross' had been cherished by her; he came to Switzerland every year
because it was associated with her; he had joined the spiritualist
body in the mad hope that perhaps there might be something in it,
perhaps there might be a power that could call her back to earth.
Even the favourite occupation of his life, visiting cathedrals and
churches and taking rubbings from monumental brasses, had begun