To avoid observation, it was necessary
to hug the beach until I had gained cover from the higher sand hills on
the little headland, when I might strike across, through the hollows, for
the margin of the wood. The sun was about setting; the tide was low, and
all the quicksands uncovered; and I was moving along, lost in unpleasant
thought, when I was suddenly thunderstruck to perceive the prints of human
feet. They ran parallel to my own course, but low down upon the beach,
instead of along the border of the turf; and, when I examined them, I saw
at once, by the size and coarseness of the impression, that it was a
stranger to me and to those of the pavilion who had recently passed that
way. Not only so; but from the recklessness of the course which he had
followed, steering near to the most formidable portions of the sand, he
was evidently a stranger to the country and to the ill-repute of Graden
beach.
Step by step I followed the prints; until, a quarter of a mile farther, I
beheld them die away into the southeastern boundary of Graden Floe. There,
whoever he was, the miserable man had perished. One or two gulls, who had,
perhaps, seen him disappear, wheeled over his sepulcher with their usual
melancholy piping. The sun had broken through the clouds by a last effort,
and colored the wide level of quicksands with a dusky purple.
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