XV. THE FINAL RESOLVE

XXVI. IN LUCERNE

XXVII. HIS OWN CHILDREN

XXVIII. AN EMIGRATION SCHEME

XXIX. FAREWELL

XXX. QUITE ALONE

XXXI. LAST WORDS

COBWEBS AND CABLES

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

ABSCONDED.

Late as it was, though the handsome office-clock on the chimney-piece
had already struck eleven, Roland Sefton did not move. He had not
stirred hand or foot for a long while now; no more than if he had been
bound fast by many strong cords, which no effort could break or untie.
His confidential clerk had left him two hours ago, and the undisturbed
stillness of night had surrounded him ever since he had listened to his
retreating footsteps. "Poor Acton!" he had said half aloud, and with a
heavy sigh.

As he sat there, his clasped hands resting on his desk and his face
hidden on them, all his life seemed to unfold itself before him; not in
painful memories of the past only, but in terrified prevision of the
black future.

How dear his native town was to him! He had always loved it from his
very babyhood. The wide old streets, with ancient houses still standing
here and there, rising or falling in gentle slopes, and called by quaint
old names such as he never heard elsewhere; the fine old churches
crowning the hills, and lifting up delicate tall spires, visible a score
of miles away; the grammar school where he had spent the happiest days
of his boyhood; the rapid river, brown and swirling, which swept past
the town, and came back again as if it could not leave it; the ancient
bridges spanning it, and the sharp-cornered recesses on them where he
had spent many an idle hour, watching the boats row in and out under the
arches; he saw every familiar nook and corner of his native town vividly
and suddenly, as if he caught glimpses of them by the capricious play of
lightning.

And this pleasant home of his; these walls which inclosed his
birth-place, and the birth-place of his children! He could not imagine
himself finding true rest and a peaceful shelter elsewhere. The spacious
old rooms, with brown wainscoted walls and carved ceilings; the tall and
narrow windows, with deep window-sills, where as a child he had so often
knelt, gazing out on the wide green landscape and the far distant,
almost level line of the horizon. His boy, Felix, had knelt in one of
them a few hours ago, looking out with grave childish eyes on the
sunset. The broad, shallow steps of the oaken staircase, trodden so man