I AM an artist, and a well-known one, for the last several years, though I am not even now more than four-and-thirty; but whatsoever may be my gifts, the world would certainly not have so early recognised them but for the strange circumstances which brought me per saltum into the full blaze of public notice.

      Not that at the time I was quite unknown. The name of Gerald Leigh was spoken of as that of a rising man, who might be expected in time to make considerable mark. I loved my art. I was ambitious, and a hard worker, without which last, the genius of a Michel Angelo can attain to nothingness — if such a paradoxical expression be permissible.

      I had been very hard at work all that year, and about the middle of June, was glad to get a week's rest where I was an old habitué for that sort of modest holiday — at Cookham Lock, where I lodged in the pretty little house or cottage of the lockman. I was always welcome to him and his wife and son Jack, a fine lad of eighteen. I could lounge in the little garden, bounded on one side by the lock itself, sketch, read, study the faces of those who passed through the lock, or take my boat (hired pro tem. from Cookham), and go or come as early or late in as I pleased — in fact, do as I liked. So I donned the whites, packed my few traps and transported myself to old Tom Baynes' rustic, flower-surrounded home. That was on a Saturday, and I intended remaining just over the week, that is, till the Sunday night when I should return to my London lodgings ready to start work on the Monday.

      The weather fortunately was splendid, and I thoroughly enjoyed my dolce far niente — up to the Friday night. If I were to live a hundred years, I can never forget that awful night.

      All the morning I was out in my boat, but I came back about two to dinner, and after that remained in — that is, in the garden, where I could always find amusement by the hour together, helping old Tom or his son with their tickets and money-taking, and observing, whilst I chatted with this one or that of the passengers in my free and easy way, especially with the pretty girls. There is always too such a delightful freemasonry on the river that is all its own.

      Dear old Thames! how I love thee!

      A good many boats and launches had gone through both up and down during the day, but about three there was a long lull, the pleasure traffic being of course nothing to what it is in the autumn, when all the riverside places are full of visitors.

      The last craft that went through after three was a small launch going up-stream, so that the lock was left full when Tom shut the up-gates behind her and went in to his tea.

      I remained where I was outside, lounging on a low, comfortable old deck-chair, basking like a cat in the glorious sunshine; I made not even a pretence of reading the book I had fetched out, but let it lie on the grass whilst I lazily feasted my eyes on the picturesque scenery before them of river and foliage and the noble heights of Cliveden beyond on the left, down stream.

      But presently, it might be a little after four, I heard the cry from up-river of "Lock" — not the modern shout of the word merely repeated short and sharp several times, but the good old fashioned sing-song call. And this was a woman's voice too, rich and full-toned, giving out the prolonged "Lo-o-ck," on two musical notes, resonant and carrying the sound, as no shout ever can do. I called out at once to Tom.

      "A-hoy, Tom! boat coming down stream," as I sprang up to see who was in the boat and waved my hand out as a signal that the call was heard.

      She was coming down easy, a pretty craft, a single sculler rowed by a gentleman, his sole sitter being a young lady, who was steering. She too was in white, but had a crimson sailor-collar, ditto cuffs to her wide sleeves, and a crimson sash and cap.

      "By Jove, she is pretty, Tom," I said, as the old seaman began to open one gate, "I'll do the ticket taking."

      "All right, sir, here you are." Tom laughed, and handed me the ticket.

      The next moment the rower shipped his sculls and the boat floated into the lock, where the man kept her comfortably along- side our bank by holding to one of the chains attached to the walls of all the stone-built lock for that purpose.

      From where I stood I took a regular good look at the occupants of the boat before I moved into prominence.

      The man was, I should say, decidedly over thirty, fair, and good-looking; but to me there was something repellant in his face, a sort of latent storminess behind it, a quick, suspicious look in the eyes, a perpetual restlessness of the mouth, which, even as I watched, brought out once or twice an almost sinister curve. All of these characteristics I have found to belong broadly to a very violent jealous temper which veritably "makes the meat it feeds on." "I don't like you, sirree," said I mentally. I am blessed or cursed, whichever it may be, with the artistic temperament in full measure — sensitive, high-strung, impressionable, often almost painfully alive to a sense of sympathy or antipathy. To-day, with these two people, I was curiously impressed by both sensations, for, as instantly as the man stirred the latter, so the woman drew the former. She was quite nine or ten years his junior, exquisitely pretty, with large, beautiful dark eyes, and a skin like the soft downy side of a peach; a face that stamped itself strangely on my mental vision, partly, perhaps, for the wistful, pathetic, underlying of pain I detected in it in repose.

      Tom was now beginning to open the sluices of the down-gates, and I went forward for the money. As I came into full view both passengers looked up straight at me naturally enough; the man with a quick frown, which roused a mischievous spirit of devilment in me. Over the girl's face on the contrary there went a flash of pleased recognition — unmistakably so, as when one suddenly recognises a person seen elsewhere, but a stranger personally.

      "A return ticket, I suppose?" I asked of her more than him, purposely of course, and I smiled as I bowed, offering the ticket.

      She smiled too, said: "Please. Thank you," and stretched up her left hand, which was nearest, for the bit of pink paper, and it gave me an odd start to see that she wore a wedding ring.

      "Give it to me, please; here's the money," said the man quickly, leaning forward to intercept my hand, evidently irritated

.

      I took the threepence, but, coolly ignoring his hasty movement, gave her the ticket, remarking with comic gravity:

      "That gives you in printed words the curious permission to pass in, through, under or over the lock or weir, but I fancy few would care to try that last experiment."

      The gentleman said shortly: "Not unless they were fools," but his wife (so I guessed her to be, poor girl!) laughed and answered in the same strain.

      "I'm not sure that I won't get my husband to see what we can do with that mode of transit. What say you, Alfred?"

      "That I prefer the ordinary water-way to Bolter's Lock," was the curt, ungraciously spoken answer. "What a time that fellow is with the sluices," flinging an angry look round towards good old Tom Baynes.

      I quite understood what all this palpable and uncourteous bad temper meant. The man was jealous, even because his wife noticed or was noticed by a mere stranger like myself, but I also saw by the look of quiet defiance on her resolute mouth that she was no meek, submissive fool. I said carelessly:

      "The water is sinking quite as fast as is safe. You can begin to go forward soon."

      Water and boat sank down, down, until the first was level with the down stream. As Tom opened the gate the lady looked up and said to me brightly:

      "Good day, and I hope you'll be famous some day."

      "Thank you for so kind a wish," I answered, surprised and amused, "but I had no idea that —"

      But there her husband gave the boat a savage swing forwards by the next chain hanging down, and exclaimed sharply:

      "My dear Clare, do mind the rail: it ground the wall!"

      Which was of course not true. She only said:

      "It's all right," but added to me as the boat, with which I kept pace to the gate, neared the outlet: "I saw you at the Academy in May, and you were pointed out to me as Gerald Leigh, the artist."

      Then the boat swept away down stream before the strong stroke of an angry rower. Tom and I watched it, hearing distinctly on the clear air that he was speaking fiercely to the girl. "Contemptible, jealous brute," I said indignantly. "Who are they, Tom? Have they been through here before?"

      "No, sir; but the boat, the Formosa, belongs to Bill Grealy, at Marlow, so these two must be stopping at Marlow. I don't like him, sir, anyhow."

      "Nor I, by Jove!" I answered, emphatically. "I can't imagine how she came to marry such a fellow, at all."

      "Neither me, sir. He can't abear her to speak to a handsomer gentleman than hisself," chuckled Tom. "Ah! there's the missus to call you to your tea, sir."

      "Thanks. And after that, Tom" — the old seaman and I were very chummy — "I'm going to sit out here and sketch those two people's faces. I can't get them out of my head. And look here, Tom, if the Formosa comes back by chance while I am indoors later at supper, maybe — mind you give me the tip."

      "All right, sir."

      I was busy over my sketches all the time after tea till quite dusk, and so entirely had I the two faces before my memory and imagination that the likeness on my paper could not have been more perfect had the originals been sitting to me in bodily form. At nine I went in to supper, but was soon out again. A curiously inexplicable restlessness was beginning to creep over me. Most of the craft both ways, which we knew must repass the lock, had returned by this time, but not a sign of the Formosa, for which I was in truth unconsciously watching with a strange expectancy.

      About ten Mrs. Baynes and the son Jack went off to bed, and Tom came out to me, gave a look each way and said:

      "I'm about tired too, sir, wish them two blessed craft were through so as I'd turn in."

      "Are all counted through but two?" I asked. "There is the Formosa up —"

      "And a launch down, sir, what come up with a big party from Skindler's this morning while you was out; and if she'll only come through first the water'll be down beautiful ready for t'other party to come in straight."

      "Yes — and there is the launch then," for at that moment we heard the shrill whistle and quick regular beat of the screw of a steam launch; then her port and starboard lights showed up the lock stream and in a short time she was in the lock. She had a lively party on board, and I caught the oddest criss-cross of chatter about the day's pleasure principally, but just as the launch began to fussily puff-puff out of the lock again my attention was caught and chained by a name, and parts of remarks from a group on the poop.

      "Yes, Clare Beverly and that husband of hers. Saw them as we passed up to-day at Grealy's place. Yes, his mad jealousy would drive any girl to bolt, I should say. Got friends at Maidenhead, I think —"

      Then the launch was gone.

      Beverly! so that was her name! Beautiful, unhappy Clare, who —    Bah! What a fool I was to keep thinking of her, wondering where they had gone. Perhaps to see their friends at Maidenhead and so were later back.

      "Tom," I said, when he had shut the gates again, "you go and lie down on the big sofa in my parlour and I'll call you when the Formosa is coming."

      "Thank you, sir, but you —"

      Oh, I never do turn in till very late, and I certainly shouldn't go to bed early this splendid night. Why, the moon is getting above the woods already. No, I'll keep watch out here, old chap, so you do a doss, as I tell you."

      He went in and I was alone in the still, mysterious night, with the weird, deep shadows and glint of the silvery moonlight on the rippling river as the moon rose higher and higher, gazing down on earth with her face of still, awesome wisdom, as if she read one's very soul.

      Half-past ten, a quarter to eleven, eleven, struck slowly out from Cookham church and somewhere else far off, then again silence, save for the eternal wash of the weir away in the back-stream, right behind the house. How deadly still it was, how lonely, myself the only creature awake, the solitary, sleepless watcher. Heavens! how sleepless and watchful — for what? I scarcely knew, save that I waited for that last boat to come into the black deep waters in the lock. Was it only this awesome solitude and vastness of silence around that grew — grew into an oppression like an actual weight? Half-past eleven! Would that boat never come? Why should I wait longer? Why could I not tear myself from my self-imposed watch? I tried, but I could not — that is the word — could not. Something impelled me to stop, held me at my post, no longer even pacing to-and-fro, but standing where I commanded a full view down stream, where I should see any craft the moment it rounded the bend and passed from the shadows of the trees, into the moonlight.

      A quarter to twelve! and then suddenly there came the signal for which I watched, the musical, prolonged "Lo-o-ock" of the morning, the same voice of Clare, and yet the sound made my very blood run ice-cold with a chill, nameless horror, strange and beyond measure awful, as the cry came again, afar, near, around me, real, weird, a wild wail of agonised appeal, in the slow, prolonged cadence, and, as it died away, my wide-strained eyes saw the boat rowed by the girl, sweep round the turn into the cold, pitiless moonlight — Clare Beverly only — alone in the boat at this hour. What did it mean, in Heaven's name? What had happened? She came on with a long, powerful stroke and perfect form that riveted admiration. But where was the rhythmatic click-click in the rowlocks and plash of the water off the sculls? There was not a sound of either, and the curious, dreadful sensation that was creeping over me, deepened. I called hoarsely — it seemed like some strange voice:

      "Tom, wake! wake! the boat is coming," and had begun to open back the gate when he came stumbling out, rubbing his dazed eyes.

      "What — why?" he began, mechanically taking up his accustomed work, and pushing the huge lever beam. "Boat! I don't see nothing, sir."

      "You are blind with sleep," I said, "she is closer now," I was helping him all the time, and the nearest gate was now well back against the lock wall, "and only the — only Mrs. Beverly in her; her dress is dripping wet too! Don't you see now?"

      Tom stared hard at me, then down the stream, and again rubbed his eyes.

      "Lord, sir, is it you or me that's queer-like? I see the boat jest there — but not a soul in her, as I'm a living man," said he, with an odd, sharp shiver. "You give me the creeps, sir."

      He stepped back where he could see the water below the bank, but I felt that he was looking at me with an odd sort of fellow feeling; he was not a "sensitive," as I had been told I am, but seamen are rarely materialists, they see too much of God's wonders for that error.

      As he drew back, the rower gave three or four strong strokes to send in the boat against the current with the impetus, and shipping the sculls, was instantly in the stern seat steering, and so faced me as the boat drifted slowly past into the lock. And my God! the awful horror of that bloodless face! shall I ever forget it? I knew now, I had known it somehow in my soul from the first — that I was face to face with no mortal mystery of life and death. I knew, with a strange great calm possessing my whole being that It had come for me, that I must go back in the boat whether I would or not, alone with that awesome figure in the stern, whithersoever it steered me.

      I laid my hand in Tom's, feeling him shudder as if the hand of a corpse had touched him, and said in a hoarse whisper:

      "She — it — has come for me and I must go. Go you to sleep when you have shut the gate after — after us, Tom. This will be the last boat in the lock to-night."

      Tom wrung my hand in silence and followed me to the edge of the lock above where the boat lay in gloom below by the wall. I went over, lowering myself by the chain into her, took the rower's seat, pushed off, wore her head round and pulled out of the lock down stream, with that dreadful white figure sitting opposite, steering me I knew — by the terrible prescience that had its source beyond mortal bounds — to the discovery of an appalling crime. Then I saw that the white dress was dripping wet.

      I felt every nerve strung up to a kind of agony, and yet I seemed for the time endowed with a strength more than human. The boat flew at racing speed before my strokes, down the lock stream, out into the open river, past Formosa Island on the right, and then, as I had foreseen, my weird guide headed straight for the famous backwater which skirts Cliveden and Taplow Heights, parallel to the main stream nearly down to the weir and mill by Maidenhead (Bolter's) Lock.

      I had to ease down now and go carefully — the current runs strong, the backwater is narrow and reedy near the banks — and how deep the gloom was under the heavy shadows of the trees, how black and deep the water looked! I shivered in the warm, summer night, as if the breeze that sighed overhead were a winter blast.

      On, on, still in the grim quiet, and yet no sign to arrest the slow measured sweep of the oars in my hands — on, past the gateless old gateposts which divide the Cliveden from the Taplow Court grounds — on, still for just another hundred yards, where the bank was rather steep and high and the water very deep and, I knew, full of bind-weeds below. I felt every fibre, every nerve to be strung up to a tension that seemed nigh to breaking point. For the first time I glanced back over my shoulder and in that second I felt a clammy dead-cold touch on my hand that made my very heart stand still, but I instantly checked the boat, starting round towards —

      It was gone, I was alone in the awful solitude and the silence of a dark deed, done to-night. I bent over the boat's side — I saw the white garments below, caught perhaps amongst reeds and tree roots. I could surely discern the beautiful dead face, staring up with wide, sightless eyes through the water — my God! the corpse of a murdered woman!

*       *       *       *       *       *      *

      I made my way to the Maidenhead police station to get help and give full information and a description of the murderer Alfred Beverly, adding that I could give the inspector a drawing of the man, and of course I went back with the police to the scene of the crime, and when the body was brought ashore and examined by the divisional surgeon he found marks on the white throat which showed that the assassin had at least half throttled his helpless victim before he drowned her. The watch Clare wore we found had stopped at twenty-five minutes to twelve, that is, just ten minutes before I heard and saw Clare's spirit self, my twin soul. And assuredly but for my aid, so mysteriously invoked, the black deed would have remained undiscovered long enough for the murderer to make good his escape. Now, any attempt came too late — descriptions, and the likeness of him were fatal obstacles, and he was traced and arrested the next evening.

      I have little more to tell of this strange, most awful story, which I do not even pretend to explain, for our finite mortality can only, we know, "see through a glass darkly." I can only say what happened — the why is beyond me.

      The whole case and its extraordinary circumstances made a sensation not soon forgotten, and naturally my strange evidence, which Tom Baynes corroborated, was talked over, discussed, canvassed by everyone.

      There stood the logic of fact. I had not, could not possibly have known or suspected the murder unless my story were true. The wretched jealous husband's guilt was proved fully at the trial and the law's just penalty was carried out, while for me, Gerald Leigh, the artist, the tragic story fulfilled poor Clare's generous and even terribly prophetic wish: "I hope you will be famous one day!" I stood at once in the fierce white light of public notice. I received commission after commission at almost my own terms, and a leading picture dealer offered me an enormous price for a portrait of Clare Beverly. I refused. Only my two or three very intimate friends, and now, my dear wife, ever see a picture which hangs in my private room next the studio — a picture which something beyond myself impelled me to paint, so deep and haunting was the impression on my inmost soul of the scene and first sight of that mysterious messenger. Underneath the picture I have written only "The Last Boat in the Lock."