Page:Haworth's.djvu/189

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CHAPTER XXV.

"I SHALL NOT TURN BACK."


Murdoch went out into the night alone. When he found himself outside the iron gate he stood still for a moment.

"I will not go home yet," he said; "not yet."

He knew this time where he was going when he turned his steps upon the road again. He had only left the place a few hours before.

The moonlight gave it almost a desolate look, he thought, as he passed through the entrance. The wind still swayed the grass upon the mounds fitfully, and the headstones cast darker shadows upon them. There was no shadow upon the one under which Stephen Murdoch rested. It lay in the broad moonlight. Murdoch noticed this as he stopped beside it. He sat down upon the grass, just as he had done in the afternoon.

"Better not go home, just yet," he said again. "There is time enough."

Suddenly an almost unnatural calmness had fallen upon him. His passions and uncertainties of the past few months seemed small things. He had reached a climax and for a moment there seemed time enough. He thought of the past almost coldly—going over the ground