Now, as I spoke, he lifted himself upon his hands and stared up at me. I saw a haggard, hairy face, very thin and sunken, but a fire burned in the eyes, and the eyes seemed, somehow, familiar.

"You!" he cried, and spat up in the air towards me; "devil!" he cried, "Devil Vibart." I recoiled instinctively before the man's sudden, wild ferocity, but, propping himself against the bank, he shook his hand at me, and laughed.

"Devil!" he repeated; "shade!--ghost of a devil!--have you come back to see me die?"

"Who are you?" I cried, bending to look into the pale, emaciated face; "who are you?"

"A shadow," he answered, passing a shaking hand up over his face and brow, "a ghost--a phantom--as you are; but my name was Strickland once, as yours was Devil Vibart. I am changed of late--you said so in the Hollow, and--laughed. You don't laugh now, Devil Vibart, you remember poor John Strickland now."

"You are the Outside Passenger!" I exclaimed, "the madman who followed and shot at me in a wood--"

"Followed? Yes, I was a shadow that was always behind you --following and following you, Satan Vibart, tracking and tracking you to hell and damnation. And you fled here, and you fled there, but I was always behind you; you hid from me among lowly folk, but you could not escape the shadow. Many times I would have killed you--but she was between--the Woman. I came once to your cottage; it was night, and the door opened beneath my hand--but your time was not then. But--ha!--I met you among trees, as I did once before, and I told you my name--as I did once before, and I spoke of her--of Angela, and cried her name --and shot you--just here, above the brow; and so you died, Devil Vibart, as soon I must, for my mission is accomplished--"

"It was you!" I cried, kneeling beside him," it was your hand that shot Sir Maurice Vibart?"

"Yes," he answered, his voice growing very gentle as he went on, "for Angela's sake--my dead wife," and, fumbling in his pocket, he drew out a woman's small, lace-edged handkerchief, and I saw that it was thickened and black with blood. "This was hers," be continued, "in her hand, the night she died--I had meant to lay it on her grave--the blood of atonement--but now--"

A sudden crash in the hedge above; a figure silhouetted against the sky; a shadowy arm, that, falling, struck the moon out of heaven, and, in the darkness, I was down upon my knees, and fingers were upon my throat.

"Oh, Darby!" cried a voice, "I've got him--this way--quick--oh, Darb--" My fist drove into his ribs; I struggled up under a rain of blows, and we struck and swayed and staggered and struck --trampling the groaning wretch who lay dying in the ditch. And before me was the pale oval of a face, and I smote it twice with my pistol-butt, and it was gone, and I--was running along the road.

"Charmian spoke truth! O God, I thank thee!"

I burst through a hedge, running on, and on--careless alike of being seen, of capture or escape, of prison or freedom, for in my heart was a great joy.

I was conscious of shouts and cries, but I heeded them no more, listening only to the song of happiness my heart was singing:

"Charmian spoke truth, her hands are clean. O God, I thank thee!"

And, as I went, I presently espied a caravan, and before it a fire of sticks, above which a man was bending, who, raising his head, stared at me as I approached. He was a strange-looking man, who glared at me with one eye and leered jocosely with the other; and, being spent and short of breath, I stopped, and wiping the sweat from my eyes I saw that it was blood.

"How--is Lewis?" I panted.

"What," exclaimed the man, drawing nearer, "is it you?--James!

but you're a picter, you are--hallo!" he stopped, as his glance encountered the steel that glittered upon my wrist; while upon the silence the shouts swelled, drawing near and nearer.

"So--the Runners is arter you, are they, young feller?"

"Yes," said I; "yes. You have only to cry out, and they will take me, for I can fight no more, nor run any farther; this knock on the head has made me very dizzy."

"Then--take a pull at this 'ere," said he, and thrust a flat bottle into my hand. The fiery spirit burned my throat, but almost immediately my strength and courage revived.

"Better?"

"Much better," I answered, returning the bottle, "and I thank you--"

"Don't go for to thank _me_, young feller," said he, driving the cork into the bottle with a blow of his fist, "you thank that young feller as once done as much for me--at a fair. An' now --cutaway--run!--the 'edge is good and dark, up yonder--lay low a bit, and leave these damned Runners to me." I obeyed without more ado, and, as I ran up the lane, I heard him shouting and swearing as though engaged in a desperate encounter; and, turning in the shadow of the hedge, I saw him met by two men, with whom, still shouting and gesticulating excitedly, he set off, running --down the lane.

And so I, once more, turned my face London-wards.

The blood still flowed from the cut in my head, getting often into my eyes, yet I made good progress notwithstanding. But, little by little, the effect of the spirits wore off, a drowsiness stole over me, my limbs felt numbed and heavy. And with this came strange fancies and a dread of the dark.

Sometimes it seemed that odd lights danced before my eyes, like marsh-fires, and strange, voices gabbled in my ears, furiously unintelligible, with laughter in a high-pitched key; sometimes I cast myself down in the dewy grass, only to start up again, trembling, and run on till I was breathless; but ever I struggled forward, despite the throbbing of my broken head, and the gnawing hunger that consumed me.

After a while, a mist came on, a mist that formed itself into deep valleys, or rose in jagged spires and pinnacles, but constantly changing; a mist that moved and writhed within itself.

And in this mist were forms, nebulous and indistinct, multitudes that moved in time with me, and the voices seemed louder than before, and the laughter much shriller, while repeated over and over again, I caught that awful word: MURDER, MURDER.

Chief among this host walked one whose head and face were muffled from my sight, but who watched me, I knew, through the folds, with eyes that stared fixed and wide.

But now, indeed, the mist seemed to have got into my brain, and all things were hazy, and my memory of them is dim. Yet I recall passing Bromley village, and slinking furtively through the shadows of the deserted High Street, but thereafter all is blank save a memory of pain and toil and deadly fatigue.

I was stumbling up steps--the steps of a terrace; a great house lay before me, with lighted windows here and there, but these I feared, and so came creeping to one that I knew well, and whose dark panes glittered palely under the dying moon. And now I took out my clasp-knife, and, fumbling blindly, put back the catch (as I had often done as a boy), and so, the window opening, I clambered into the dimness beyond.

Now as I stumbled forward my hand touched something, a long, dark object that was covered with a cloth, and, hardly knowing what I did, I drew back this cloth and looked down at that which it had covered, and sank down upon my knees, groaning. For there, staring up at me, cold, contemptuous, and set like marble, was the smiling, dead face of my cousin Maurice.

As I knelt there, I was conscious that the door had opened, that some one approached, bearing a light, but I did not move or heed.

"Peter?--good God in heaven!--is it Peter?" I looked up and into the dilated eyes of Sir Richard. "Is it really Peter?" he whispered.

"Yes, sir--dying, I think."

"No, no--Peter--dear boy," he stammered. "You didn't know--you hadn't heard--poor Maurice--murdered--fellow--name of Smith--!"

"Yes, Sir Richard, I know more about it than most. You see, I am Peter Smith." Sir Richard fell back from me, and I saw the candle swaying in his grasp.

"You?" he whispered, "you? Oh, Peter!--oh, my boy!"

"But I am innocent--innocent--you believe me--you who were my earliest friend--my good, kind friend--you believe me?" and I stretched out my hands appealingly, but, as I did so, the light fell gleaming upon my shameful wristlets; and, even as we gazed into each other's eyes, mute and breathless, came the sound of steps and hushed voices. Sir Richard sprang forward, and, catching me in a powerful hand, half led, half dragged me behind a tall leather screen beside the hearth, and thrusting me into a chair, turned and hurried to meet the intruders.

They were three, as I soon discovered by their voices, one of which I thought I recognized.

"It's a devilish shame!" the first was saying; "not a soul here for the funeral but our four selves--I say it's a shame--a burning shame!"

"That, sir, depends entirely on the point of view," answered the second, a somewhat aggressive voice, and this it was I seemed to recognize.

"Point of view, sir? Where, I should like to know, are all those smiling nonentities--those fawning sycophants who were once so proud of his patronage, who openly modelled themselves upon him, whose highest ambition was to be called a friend of the famous 'Buck' Vibart where are they now?"

"Doing the same by the present favorite, as is the nature of their kind," responded the third; "poor Maurice is already forgotten."

"The Prince," said the harsh voice, "the Prince would never have forgiven him for crossing him in the affair of the Lady Sophia Sefton; the day he ran off with her he was as surely dead--in a social sense--as he is now in every sense."

Here the mist settled down upon my brain once more, and I heard nothing but a confused murmur of voices, and it seemed to me that I was back on the road again, hemmed in by those gibbering phantoms that spoke so much, and yet said but one word: "Murder."

"Quick--a candle here--a candle--bring a light--" There came a glare before my smarting eyes, and I struggled up to my feet.

"Why--I have seen this fellow's face somewhere--ah!--yes, at an inn--a hang-dog rogue--I threatened to pull his nose, I remember, and--by Heaven!--handcuffs! He has been roughly handled, too!

Gentlemen, I'll lay my life the murderer is found--though how he should come here of all places--extraordinary. Sir Richard--you and I, as magistrates--duty--" But the mist was very thick, and the voices grew confused again; only I knew that hands were upon me, that I was led into another room, where were lights that glittered upon the silver, the decanters and glasses of a supper table.

"Yes," I was saying, slowly and heavily; "yes, I am Peter Smith --a blacksmith--who escaped from his gaolers on the Tonbridge Road--but I am innocent--before God--I am innocent. And now--do with me as you will--for I am--very weary--"