Was it that he moved as he slept, or did the thing which he thought he saw actually occur! Some stones slipped from off the mound and, to his eyes looking down into the grave, it seemed that Strangeways' hand began to grope frantically after the locket which had been about his neck, and that, finding it missing, his face became angry and he strove to rise, causing the stones to fall and the ground to tremble.
Granger jumped up, and stood there shaking with his hands clenched and his head thrown back, prepared.
"Will you answer me?" he cried in despair. "Don't you know how I suffer? If you consent to what I have asked of you, give me a sign? If nothing happens, I shall know that you are cruel and do not care."
When he had waited in vain some seconds, he lost his nerve and his courage. Kneeling beside the grave he commenced to weep, smoothing the stones with his hands coaxingly like a child, and whispering, "Give me a sign. Give me a sign. Give me a sign."
Suddenly he paused in his pleading. The rustling of water against a travelling prow, and sound of paddles thrust in, forced back, and withdrawn, struck upon his ears. He threw himself full length along the ground; he did not want to be discovered there. Stealing up-stream from the northward, creeping close in to the opposite bank to avoid the current, came a canoe, sitting deep in the water, heavily laden with furs; the stern-paddle was held by a tall and thickly bearded man, and in the prow, even at that distance and in that shadowy light, it was possible to make out that the second figure was that of a girl. Granger recognised them immediately, and knew that the Man with the Dead Soul and his daughter had returned. He also noticed that Eyelids was not there. They did not see him, but quickly vanished round the bend.
When all was silent and lonely again, Granger arose. "It is a sign," he said. Standing above the grave, before departing he spoke once more with the man who lay buried there. "Strangeways, you may rest quiet now," he said. "Though I cannot revenge her as you have desired, we can both, in our separate ways, be true to her."
He delayed a moment to have what he had said confirmed; but this time no token either of dissent or approval was vouchsafed.