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News from the Duchy by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
page 81 of 243 (33%)
would have been most useful, or so I thought. But he led the way
easily, and I followed with scarce a stumble. "We shall not need
it," he said; "for see, there they are!" pointing to a small light
that moved on the sands below us. "But who are they?" I asked.
He strode down ahead of me, making swiftly for the light, and coming
upon them in the noise of the gale we surprised a man and a woman,
who at first cowered before us and then would have cast down their
light and run. But my companion, unwrapping the lantern, held it
high and so that the light shone on their faces. They were John
Magor and his wife Grace.

'Then I, remembering what cry of shipwrecked souls had reached to my
library in the Vicarage, and well guessing what work these wretches
had been at, lifted my voice to accuse them. But the young man Luke
stepped between us, and said he to them gently, "Come, and I will
show what you seek." He went before us for maybe two hundred yards
to the northern end of the beach, they behind him quaking, and I
shepherding them in my righteous wrath. "Behold you," said he, and
again lifted the lantern over a rock dark with seaweed (and yet the
weed shone in the light)--"Behold you, what you have wrecked."

'On their backs along the flat of the rock lay two naked bodies, of a
youth and a maid, half-clasped one to another. He handed me the
lantern for a better look, and in the rays of it the two wretches
peered forward as if drawn against their will. I cannot well say if
they or I first perceived the miracle; that these corpses, as they
lay in the posture, so bore the very likeness of the two lovers on my
sculptured slab. But I remember that, as John and Grace Magor
screamed back and clung to me, and as by the commotion of them
clutching at my knees the lantern fell and was extinguished, I heard
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