"
At this point of the verbal narrative, my uncle Edmund again spoke.
"You never struck me, Ed," he cried; "or if you did, I was already
senseless. I remember nothing of the water."
"When I came to myself," the manuscript goes on, "I was lying in a pebbly
shoal. The moon was aloft in heaven. I was cold to the heart, cold to the
marrow of my bones. I could move neither hand nor foot, and thought I was
dead. By slow degrees a little power came back, and I managed at length,
after much agonizing effort, to get up on my feet--only to fall again.
After several such failures, I found myself capable of dragging myself
along like a serpent, and so got out of the water, and on the next
endeavour was able to stand. I had forgotten everything; but when my eyes
fell on the darting torrent, I remembered all--not as a fact, but as a
terrible dream from which I thanked heaven I had come awake.
"But as I tottered along, I came slowly to myself, and a fearful doubt
awoke. If it was a dream, where had I dreamt it? How had I come to wake
where I found myself? How had the dream turned real about me? Where was I
last in my remembrance? Where was my brother? Where was the lady in the
moonlight? No, it was not a dream! If my brother had not got out of the
water, I was his murderer! I had struck him!--Oh, the horror of it! If
only I could stop dreaming it--three times almost every night!"
Again uncle Edmund interposed--not altogether logically:
"I tell you, I don't believe you struck me, Ed! And you must remember,
neither of us would have got out if you hadn't!"
"You might have let me go!" said the other.
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