“Renny—by the saints!” He spoke in a dry, parched whisper. “It’s the mill, isn’t it?”
“Yes; it’s the mill. I brought you here filthy with drink, after you’d tried to throw yourself under a train and thought better of it.”
He struggled wildly into a sitting posture and his eyelids blinked with horror.
“I thought of it all the way in the train—coming up—from London,” he said in a shrill undervoice. “When I got out at the station I had some more—the last straw, I suppose—for I wandered, and found myself above the place—and the devil drove me down to do it.”
“Well, you repented, it seems.”
“I couldn’t—when I heard it. And the very wind of it seemed to tear at me as it passed.”
“What brings you to London? I thought you were still abroad.”
“What drove me? What always drives me? That cruel, persecuting demon!”
“He found you out over there, then?”
“I can’t hide from him. I’ve never had a week of rest and peace after that first year. It was all right then. I threw upon the green cloth the miserable surplus of the stuff you lent me and won. For six months we lived like fighting cocks. We dressed the young ’un in the color that brought us luck. My soul, she’s a promising chick, Renny. You’re her uncle, you know; you can’t go back from that.”