ght--was it just that such things should be?
Could one believe in the goodness of God, in such a world of wanton
wickedness? Moving along in a blind haze of bewilderment, Helmsley's
thoughts were all disordered and his mind in a whirl,--what
consciousness he had left to him was centred in an effort to get
away--away!--far away from the scene of murder and death,--away from the
scent and trail of blood which seemed to infect and poison the very air!

It was a calm and lovely night. The moon rode high, and there was a soft
wind blowing in from the sea. Out over the waste of heaving water, where
the moonbeams turned the small rippling waves to the resemblance of
netted links of silver or steel, the horizon stretched sharply clear and
definite, like a line drawn under the finished chapter of vision. There
was a gentle murmur of the inflowing tide among the loose stones and
pebbles fringing the beach,--but to Helmsley's ears it sounded like the
miserable moaning of a broken heart,--the wail of a sorrowful spirit in
torture. He went on and on, with no very distinct idea of where he was
going,--he simply continued to walk automatically like one in a dream.
He did not know the time, but guessed it must be somewhere about
midnight. The road was quite deserted, and its loneliness was to him, in
his present over-wrought condition, appalling. Desolation seemed to
involve the whole earth in gloom,--the trees stood out in the white
shine of the moon like dark shrouded ghosts waving their cerements to
and fro,--the fields and hills on either side of him were bare and
solitary, and the gleam of the ocean was cold and cheerless as a "Dead
Man's Pool." Slowly he plodded along, with a thousand disjointed
fragments of thought and memory teasing his brain, all part and parcel
of his recent experiences,--he seemed to have lived through a whole
history of strange events since the herb-gatherer, Matt Peke, had
befriended him on the road,--and the most curious impression of all was
that he had somehow lost his own identity for ever. It was impossible
and ridiculous to think of himself as David Helmsley, the
millionaire,--there was, there could be no such person! David
Helmsley,--the real David Helmsley,--was very old, very tired, very
poor,--there was nothing left for him in this world save death. He had
no children, no friends,--no one who cared for him or who wanted to know
what had become of him. He was absolutely alone,--and in the hush of t