CHAPTER XLVI.
ONCE AGAIN.
In half an hour's time Murdoch had left Broxton far behind him. He left the open road and rambled across fields and through lanes. The people in the farm-houses, who knew him, saw him pass looking straight before him and walking steadily like a man with an end in view.
His mind was full of one purpose—the determination to control himself and keep his brain clear.
"Now," he said, "let me think it over—now let me look at it in cold blood."
The effort he made was something gigantic; it was a matter of physical as well as mental force. He had wavered and been vague long enough. Now the time had come to rouse himself through sheer power of will, or give up the reins and drift with the current, a lost man.
At dusk he reached Dillup, and roamed about the streets, half conscious of his surroundings. The Saturday-night shopping was going on, and squalid women hurrying past him with their baskets on their arms glanced up, wondering at his dark face and preoccupied air.
"He's noan Dillup," they said; one good woman going so far as to add that "she did na loike th' looks on him neyther," with various observations upon the moral character of foreigners in general. He saw nothing of the sensation he created, however. He rambled about errati-
