Abel fled from the presence of those who seemed to him his enemies and persecutors in a state of mind impossible to describe. The excitement in him had risen beyond the bounds of endurance. All power of resistance was over, along with all possibility of making a stand against evil fortune. He was not bad enough for his rôle. He could lie by concealment, and by inference, but not directly and in so many words; and the utter self-abandonment and unspeakable humiliation of his flight meant more than mere discovery: it meant complete moral ruin and downfall. Nothing but the entire giving in and relinquishment of every hope, the sense that he had no further step to take, no expedient, no way of escape, could have overwhelmed all his powers so dismally and so completely. For one moment only he had stood at bay, seeing as through a mist the sudden lightening and darkening of the faces round him – lightening of understanding, darkening of disapproval: he felt both to his very heart with a horrible anguish beyond all experience. He had been ashamed of his low condition, of his peasant birth, of his homely family, and this shame had made him do ignoble things; but he was not all ignoble. A strong perception, when too late, of the simple truth which might have saved him, contended in his mind with the bitterness of his shame and the rage of his despair. No possibility of anything which could be done to sot him right suggested itself to his frantic soul. It was all over: there was no longer any way of repentance, any rehabilitation for him. The weakness of his nature had found him out. Farewell everything – love, friendship, honour, credit! He would live no longer among the people who had found him out; he would not look them in the face again. He darted into the woods, running at full speed, not knowing where he went; anywhere, only to escape from them, only to avoid the look of them. Oh, cruel judges! oh, terrible tribunal! could he ever flee far enough to escape from it, to forget the look in their cruel eyes?

These harsh judges from whom Abel fled had let him go in the first shock, obeying that impulse of indignation which is so natural at the moment of a discovery, but so often repented of afterwards. Mary had stood aghast in her surprise, incapable of a word, and it was only when he was gone that compunctions woke in her.

"Oh, Roger! go after him," she cried, "go after him. Do you remember that he saved your life?"

Featherstonhaugh laughed out. He, too, was excited and uncomfortable after the other event of the afternoon, and this was a way of relieving his feelings.

"His knowledge of the place stood the fellow in stead. I thought so at the time," he cried. "To think he should have taken us in for all this time!"

Mary turned upon him with a keen glance of indignation. His laugh jarred upon her nerves. "Go, Roger, go," she cried; "if you do not go I will. Don't let him fall into despair: he saved your life."

"Whoever goes it must certainly not be you," said Featherstonhaugh in a low tone, catching at her sleeve.

Mary had no thought of going. She put up her hands to her eyes, crying in spite of herself.

"I think I hear him laugh as he did then," she said. "Oh, poor wretch! will no one go after him? will no one have pity on him? Oh, Mr Weston, I hope we may not all repent this day's work."

The vicar himself was very much discomposed.

"I did it for the best," he said – "I did it for the best."

The only person who kept his composure was Featherstonhaugh, whose ill angel evidently had the upper hand for that unhappy day.

"Here is a great piece of work," he said, "for the unmasking of a wretched impostor. For my part, I suspected him from the first. As for saving Roger's life, it was not much after all – any child could have done it who knew which were the safe places. But he may have other claims upon your brother," he added – "claims you would scarcely understand."

"Do you mean to insult me before my father and sister?" cried Roger, making a stride forward, crimson with rage and indignation.

His opponent looked at him with exasperating calm.

"Is there any need for heroics?" he said. "I have no intention of insulting you; but it might be well to explain – "

"Oh, lads, lads," cried old Mr Weston; "what is this quarrelling about? – you that ought to be brothers. Hold your hands, and hold your tongues, you foolish – "

"I think there is some mistake," said the old squire. "Sir Richard forgets himself, and so do you, Roger. Go after that unhappy young man. Let him go to his family – that is the best place for him; but tell him that if he likes to come to me in the library at any time, I will be glad to see a man of his information. Learning is of no family," said Mr Ridley, with a wave of his hand. He was the greatest aristocrat of them all, but he had a sense of the fitness of things.

"If you have such an impostor back in the house, sir, I shall desire that Mary at least may not be exposed to the chance of meeting him," said Featherstonhaugh.

"Oh, come, after all," cried Charley Landale, "Murray's no impostor. He said nothing about his people – heaps of fellows say nothing about their people. His people don't matter to us; but he's no impostor, no more than I am, or you, Featherstonhaugh. We would both sing small enough in Oxford when Murray's there."

"And Sir Richard will excuse me," said the squire, with a stiff bow, "if I say that I can take care of my daughter. Mary, it will be best for you to retire; and, Roger, I have asked you to do something for me."

"I am going, sir," said his son, gloomily; but he went with reluctance, looking back when he reached the door. "You know where to find me, Featherstonhaugh?"

And Featherstonhaugh laughed. The whole party instinctively threw themselves between the two young men – the one red with fury, the other cool, with all the exasperation of which scorn and insult are capable.

"I will go with you, Roger," said the old vicar, hastily. "Perhaps I have sinned against my brother. But no – no, I would but hamper you. Be you the messenger of mercy, and God bless you, my boy! Go! go! before it is too late."

Thus he was pushed out of the room, Charley Landale going after him. "I'll not leave him," the good-natured fellow said quickly in Mary's ear as he passed.

Featherstonhaugh made no attempt to follow. He waited almost ostentatiously to give the other full time to be out of the way, and then he went home.

But neither Roger nor his companion could find any trace of Murray. No one had seen him or could discover where he had gone. Charley Landale went home, disconsolate and feeling half-guilty, to watch and wait for his friend's return, and to give what account of it he could to his family, such as would least prejudice them against their visitor, though even the little he said threw the house into confusion and agitation indescribable. The girls cried over poor Mr Murray; the kind mother, half-horrified at the risk her daughters had run of perhaps falling in love with a nobody, and half-sorry for the nobody himself, whose "feelings" must have been terribly "hurt," sat and talked it over, neglecting the dressing-bell, and scarcely conscious even of dinner. Dinner! ought they to wait for their guest, who had never come back? Charley went out wandering about the grounds, looking for him; and even old Mr Landale himself, though indignant with "the fellow" at first, had come to be anxious too, and stared from the only window that commanded the road. But Murray never came. They ate their dinner at last when it was cold, and everything was wretched, listening to every sound outside, and starting at every footstep as if it was one of themselves who was in deadly peril and trouble. When night came, Charley, good fellow, would not go to bed, but sat and dozed, keeping a light burning in the window which was visible from the road. But, notwithstanding all their cares for him, and all the sympathy and kindness that dictated them, Murray never appeared; His things lay about his room as he had left them when he went out, light of heart, expecting to return for dinner; but he himself entered these hospitable doors no more.

The object of all these anxieties lurked somewhere among the woods in one of the shady nooks he had known when he was a boy, and which probably no one but himself and his old rustic companions knew, in the very madness of misery, while the daylight lasted. He hid himself like the first sinners – he could not bear the calm eye of the day, the cold unpitying light, that would show him and point him out to the scrutiny of men. He lay thus panting on the earth, hidden by the bushes, his mind and all his being in so wild a turmoil that, after a while, the very cause of it got obscure in his mind, and he knew only that he was a fugitive, heart-broken, ruined, and disgraced, without knowing why. He had no sooner reached a covert in the copse than there seemed to gleam before him another, better hiding-place, a cool nook by a little stream, where nobody could ever find him, where he could have a draught of water when he pleased, and the trickle of the brook to bear him company. As soon as it was dark he made his way out of the chase, and fled along the most unfrequented paths, under hedgerows and across fields, to reach this place. The country was very still, Sunday night, no one about, no one stirring anywhere. Here and there he made a detour to escape the lighted windows of a roadside cottage, whence some one might look out and see him: sometimes shrank aside into a ditch or under a tree when he saw some solitary passenger in the distance – but met no one, saw no one, and at last came to the shelter he had thought of. It was deep down among thick brushwood, heather, and whins, and young birch-trees, by the side of a little stream which flowed from the hills to the lake. The ground was damp, but he did not care. He dipped his burning brow in the stream, and drank long draughts of it. This gave him a little relief, a little physical ease; and the walk had been long, and he was unused to so much exertion. Finally, he fell asleep, with his head, like Jacob's, on a stone. The shock he had sustained seemed to take from Abel all consciousness of any claims upon him or duties to the outside world. He remembered nothing about the Landales, thought nothing of where he was to go when the morning should come, again betraying him. He thought indeed of no morning, only of safety from some immediate danger, though he could not tell what that was.

It was a very lonely place, but abounding with wild creatures – rabbits and squirrels, every kind of grasshopper and harmless insect, water-rats, moorfowl, and myriads of existences too small for names. He was woke by them as he lay, early – very early, before any human thing was stirring. He had slept feverishly, by intervals, through the night, and he woke up to a less confused sense of his misery in the morning. Gradually it broke upon him as the light came disclosing the landscape, creeping on and on. Oh, the horror of the remembering, the misery of shame, the intolerable sense of weakness, wrong, resentment, and impotence! Why was it so? Why was he born a cotter's son? Why was it a disgrace to him? How horrible! that he should be banished from the company of men, driven out into the wilds, aching every nerve of him, body and soul, miserable, abandoned, troubled, all because he was a cotter's son! Oh, wrong at which earth and heaven should cry out! Abel was not capable of realising that nothing but his own falsehood, his own cowardice, could have made his birth a shame to him – he was far beyond such an exercise of reason. He looked down from among his ferns and bushes to where the peaceful house of the Landales, where he should have been sleeping now in safety but for this, lay among the trees, and beyond it, on the banks of the shining water, saw the old Castle, whence he had been driven out, "to eat grass with the beasts of the field." That was what the old Eastern potentate had been sentenced to: was it to be his fate too? Somehow it gave the poor fugitive, half-distraught, a kind of forlorn comfort to remember that old story. His thoughts went back to the old Bible lessons he remembered long ago. What had the king done to have such a fate? and what had he done? But it gave him a little ease to realise that this had happened to some one else before.

And where was he to go? He could not show his face in this familiar place, which had again grown so dear. He would go back – back to his lonely rooms in Oxford, where he ought to be safe, he thought. But how to get there, how to stir in that garish, lavish day, which flooded every dark corner with light, so that the water-newts and earth insects had much ado to get themselves into some covert place, and how was he to walk unseen, a man? He was faint for want of food, aching with the unusual exposure, his clothes wet and torn, his hat he did not know where, his head throbbing and buzzing and all confused. But yet he might have come round out of the painful bewilderment he was in; his thoughts began to take a little shape, his mind began to occupy itself with a practical question – how to get home unseen, how to get to the road and the railway, and go back whence he had come. All might have come again to something like nature – nature sore and bleeding and wounded to the heart, but yet able to command herself, able to be restored.

But just as he had worked to this hopeful point, a jar and rustling in the branches woke every pulse in his frame again. Who was it? He peered through his covert with his bloodshot eyes, and at first saw nothing. Then gradually he distinguished something moving among the copsewood and tall bushes of heather. Who was it? What was it? A man, coming towards his hiding-place, pushing his way through the trees, leaping across the rivulets in the bog, here sinking in the marshy places, then reappearing, coming ever nearer and nearer. Abel stretched up across his little stream to watch this advancing figure, fascinated. Was it some one in search of him? Then he sat down, pulling the heather and brushwood over him to escape detection. The sounds came on, then stopped, quite close, – so close that Abel felt his very breathing would betray him. "Are you there, Ridley?" said a voice close to his ear. "So you have kept tryst. I scarcely expected you would. Get up, wherever you are, and come out." Then, after a pause, in an angry tone he added, "Is this a time for fooling? Come out, wherever you are. I can't wait here."

Abel was like one of the branches quivering over him, one moment blown this way, another that way, as different impulses swept across him. He had covered himself with the bushes, shrinking into the very earth for safety. Now, with a sudden change of idea, he sprang out from his lair, suddenly confronting Featherstonhaugh with his wild looks and haggard face. "My God!" cried the new-comer, springing backward in consternation and alarm. He did not recognise at first the extraordinary figure. Abel was very pale, his head was uncovered, his eyelids red as blood, his clothes all wet and soiled and torn. With a sudden fierceness he pursued after the other, keeping his wild eyes fixed upon him with a glare of passion and madness in them. No wonder Featherstonhaugh was afraid. "Is it you, Murray?" he said, faltering. "I – beg your pardon. I thought it was Ridley; he was to meet me here, this morning, about the boundary line. The two estates – march. We had – words yesterday, and I scarcely expected him. I am afraid you have not spent a – comfortable night?"

"Yes, I have," said Abel, hoarsely; "better than among men – better than with the false and cruel – "

"You take it too seriously, I am sure," said the other. "What does it matter who is a man's father I We are the child of our own actions, nowadays; only, if you will do me a favour, don't go any more to the Castle. It would do you no good, and it might – do harm."

"Are you my master?" said Abel.

"No, no. Don't be excited. I ask it as a favour. Don't go. I am not taking ground as your superior, Murray."

"Are you – my superior?"

"Well, yes," said the other, with a careless laugh, growing less afraid, and feeling that in his coolness he had the upper hand; "we need not inquire into that, need we? Go home, like a good fellow, and get some breakfast. You must be cramped, lying out all night – have you been there all night?"

"Who are you that speak to me as if I were your slave? Do you think I – will do what you tell me – You! Who are you that give me orders?"

"Come," said the other; "Murray, you know this will never do. You've been drinking. Go home."

"I have been – what?" shrieked the unhappy young man.

"Don't make it more evident than it is. I said drinking," said Featherstonhaugh. "Now go home."

But Abel sprang at his throat before he was aware. It was an impulse, like the other. A sudden flash and tingle of passion, and then a spring. Featherstonhaugh fell like a stone among the brushwood and broken stones of the hillside, with the grip of the madman on his neck. He was a madman now. The wavering of the mental balance, which might have been restored an hour ago, was over for ever. This second assault concluded the struggle. With no enforcement of artificial restraint, nothing but the two, in face of each other, on the lonely hillside, passion leaped into frenzy in a moment. He gripped his victim by the throat and there was a long and horrible struggle; then, when the other lay still and ceased to resist, Abel, laughing wildly, got upon his knees and struck at the helpless, prostrate figure, beating him into the bog, cruelly repeating blow on blow, blow on blow – long after all blows were needless. He kept on with a convulsive motion, rising with every stroke, like a child when it imitates the action of riding, showering down his blows, with a stick which he had picked up – with a stone, with his hands – in a fury which by-and-by degenerated into horrible, senseless play, and monotonous repetition of an act which no longer meant anything; not homicidal passion – not mad rage, but only the horrible play of a distracted brain.

But by-and-by another sound roused him – the sound of a step crashing among the branches once more. With a vague recollection in his madness that some one else was coming, he rose, all bloody and horrible, and looked about him. Some man or other stood within a few feet of him on the other side of the little stream. Some one who called to him, who hurried forward, jumping the brook. The madman knew nothing, who it was, or what he wanted; but frenzy and fear are ever akin. He turned round wildly, faced to the hills, and fled like an arrow from the bow.

CHAPTER IX

It was morning, and all the usual business was well begun; the cows were out in their pasture on the hillside; the chickens about the close vicinity of the house; nothing was audible except their busy cackle and the hum of the bees, which Elizabeth Murray kept, and which were one of her sources of income – and her own steps coming and going in her house. Before you came in sight of the house you could hear those brisk steps, stately and harmonious, giving a sign of life in the pleasant stillness. Dick was in the potato-field close by; there had been a fine crop, and he was digging them up for the market at Waterside. He was whistling as he worked, but Elizabeth, whose mind was full of many cares, did not sing snatches now of one song, now of another, as was her wont. How seldom it is that the mother of children has not occasion for anxiety about one or another! and it seemed to her that she had so much. Lily; what should she do with Lily if the girl grumbled at the loneliness, as she was likely to do, or pined for her friends, and for the admiration she had called forth? All that would be natural – quite natural. After half consenting to leave her daughter and to trust to her prudence, Elizabeth had been seized with a panic on her return home, and had sent instructions that Lily should return on Monday morning; and now again she was doubtful, as was also so natural, of the wisdom of the step she had taken. How would Lily bear the solitude? Up here among the hills, nothing except the household work and the mild vicissitudes of the chickens and the cows ever happened. Elizabeth herself did not mind, because, as she said to herself, she was old, and all that was likely to happen to her in this world had happened and was done with; and Dick did not mind, for he had not begun yet to think of anything beyond his work, and life was all before him, and he had been accustomed to the tranquillity all his days – but Lily!

And on the other hand, there was Abel to think of – the lost boy – who yet was so much greater and happier and better off than ever Elizabeth could have made him. She sighed, but took herself to task for it, declaring to herself with tears in her eyes that she did not grudge his grandeur – that it was for his happiness she cared, not for her happiness through him. "But oh, it cannot come to good that he should think shame of his own folks," she sighed in the depths of her heart. Yet it was so pleasant to think of him as "a gentleman." It seemed to Elizabeth that if she could but see him enjoying that high estate, courted and made much of by the great folks of the land, she would not want to speak to him or betray him. Oh, far from that! She would live in the house with him and never betray him.

Thus she was going on peacefully about her domestic work: the chickens cackling outside, Dick whistling in the fields, the brook trickling over the stones, the bees humming, everything full of the warmth and softness of the summer day. The air was such that unless you were ill or in trouble you gave God thanks, unenvious of other blessings, for nothing but the day; and Elizabeth was a woman subject to such influences, and, in spite of her cares, a softening of happiness stole into her mind. After all, was not everything well? However anxious she might be, there was no trouble in her family. Lily was not disobedient, and Abel, though he did not come to see his family, yet "took an interest" in them. There was no reason why she should not let the sunshine and the sweetness steal into her heart, and allow herself to acknowledge that all was well.

"Dick," she cried from the window, "lad, do you no hear a sound of somebody coming? I think I hear a step by times, and surely somebody cried to us, coming up the hill. Did you not hear?"

Dick stuck his spade into the soil, and, listening, said, "Mother, I heard nothing. But now I'm quiet, ay, that was a sound."

"It's maybe Lily," said the mother.

"Lily's foot's too light to sound so far. But we'll see soon enough when they come," said Dick, resuming his digging. He resumed his whistle too. He was not curious. Whoever it was, would not they show themselves soon enough? And in the meantime he had his work. Elizabeth, too, went in, and went to her dairy, accepting Dick's philosophy. To be sure! there was nothing so much to be expected but that when it appeared would be time enough. Time enough! And so their life went on tranquil for ten long sunny minutes more.

About that time both of them held their breath and stopped their work. Dick stuck his spade again in the half-dug row of potatoes. Elizabeth came out to the door. A hurrying, headlong step, coming on in mad haste, now ceasing for a moment as it reached the bog, coming nearer, rushing on – with other sounds, broken cries, gaspings and pantings, as of somebody hunted, came to their ears. While the mother and son listened in growing alarm, old Watch, the dog – most steady of dogs – suddenly raised his old black muzzle and gave vent to a long wailing bark of alarm, which echoed through the hills. Terror fell upon the minds of the mother and son. What was it? The light seemed to go out of the sky, the echoes to tingle all about them. These wild hurrying sounds did not come even by the usual path, but, as Dick perceived sooner than his mother, descended from the higher way, a way no one ever came. This was how it was that when the new-comer reached the place at last, Elizabeth did not see him. She knew nothing till he was close upon her. A terrible figure, bare-headed, bloody, his clothes hanging torn about him, his face ghastly and distorted, strange, harsh, broken sounds coming from his lips. She turned round only when he was within a few steps of her, when she saw him, and with a shriek of terror threw up her arms and started out of his way. Dick came rushing to her help; but the stranger heeded neither of them. He burst into the house, and threw himself, all convulsed and shivering, before the kitchen fire.

"God help us, Dick – it's a madman!" cried Elizabeth. "What will we do?"

They both stood in terror at the door. There was a moment's pause of horror and dismay. Dick was pale, but he was brave. "Go you and shut yourself in the byre, mother, and I will see – "

"Nay, nay, my lad; your mother's life is less worth than yours. But look at Watch!" she said, with a strange thrill at her heart.

Watch had been taken by surprise, and struck with terror as well as themselves. He had run terrified out of the way with another howl when the man rushed past. But now he had followed into the kitchen, without either fear or anger apparently. "He never can bide a tramp," Elizabeth said, with a strange aching wonder in her heart. They could see the huddled mass of shivering limbs before the fire. Watch went in, cautiously snuffed all round the prostrate figure, and then began slowly to wag his tail – slowly at first, and then with an appearance of wild joy, and yelps and barks of welcome. Elizabeth Murray's heart seemed to stand still. She gave Dick a look of horrible suspicion and misery. Then she made a gesture to him to keep behind her, and went in with the silence and swiftness of a ghost.

The terrible being who had thus arrived upon them had fallen down on the floor, apparently in a fit. He was lying writhing and struggling before the fire, his face distorted, his eyes glaring, foam and blood on his mouth. She went in and bent over him, then knelt down by him. She had not seen him since he was a boy. He had been twelve years old when he had gone away. She looked at him now, knowing before she looked who it was. Heaven help her! had she ever been light of heart, peaceful, happy, though this was coming? Was it years ago since she stood at her door and heard Dick whistling and the bees humming? She knew who it was even before she looked. She knew him for all his convulsed face, his terrible struggles and contortions. Abel! her son – who was a gentleman, who was too grand for his own people. The dog, faithful brute, with a truer memory than even the mother's, was licking the terrible face. She gave a great outcry, words and sobs together. "It's Watch that knows him, and not me, first!" she said.

Then she got water and dashed in his face, and rubbed his stiffened hands. She did not even know what to do for him. She knelt by his side, her face too as pale as death, unconscious cries coming from her – "Oh my lad! Oh be still! Oh let him be, good Lord, let him be!" She did not know what she said. And Dick, with a face blanched to the colour of his linen, kept plucking at her sleeve and calling softly, "Mother?" She took no notice for a long time, then irritated by the repetition turned upon him sharply, "What is it, lad?" Dick could not get any question out of his parched lips, he only looked at her and then at the writhing figure on the floor, "Can you not see for yourself?" she cried, with a groan in which there was a kind of wild incredulous laugh. "Can you not tell without asking? It's my boy Abel, him that's a gentleman; our pride and our joy!"

How the rest of the horrible morning went they never knew. Their peaceful occupations were all abandoned. In the midst of their cares for Abel – whom after a while they managed to get transferred to a bed, when the fit going off left him half unconscious and entirely prostrate – arrived Lily, all unaware of any new event at home, but with the news that a horrible murder had been discovered – Sir Richard Featherstonhaugh lying dead on the hillside, all beaten and battered. This did not seem to Elizabeth, for the moment at least, any concern of theirs; but when Lily, very frightened and half reluctant, was taken up-stairs to see her brother in his raving sleep, a gleam of painful light, a dawning of some horror seemed to gleam among them, though they could not perceive what it revealed. Lily turned from the room where lay the stranger whom they called her brother Abel, with a suppressed shriek. "It's the gentleman!" she cried; and when she had told all her story the little awe-stricken party looked each other in the face, each paler than the other, not knowing what to think. "Was he – friends – with the lad that's killed?" Elizabeth asked, turning away her face. She could not allow her children to perceive the dawn of meaning in it. When Lily replied by a tremulous account of how and when she had seen them together, Elizabeth made no comment, but by-and-by she went up-stairs and returned with the clothes Abel had worn, made up into a bundle. Lily, whose attention was still unaroused, did not notice what her mother did. But Dick, who had watched her closely, went out after her, and found her burying her bundle deep in the potato-field where he had been digging. With tremulous energy she threw up the easily dug soil, making a deep hole in a corner. She said nothing in explanation of what she did, even to him, nor did he ask – but she took hold of his arm to help her to the higher level on which he stood, and gripped it with a convulsive strain. "God grant I'm a' wrong," she said, looking as if she had been turned to stone. "Ay, mother," said Dick. It would have been more comforting to her if he had not understood her so well.