"Oh dear, he's taken away my offering," she said.
"What a hard-hearted boy! Are there no means of winning him?"
They spoke of Abel and his mother.
"We all regretted her decision to stop. It would have been better if she had gone away."
"Raymond saw her some time ago."
"So she told me; and so did he. Misfortune seems to dog the situation, for I believe Sabina was half in a mind to take our advice until that meeting. Then she changed. Apparently she misunderstood him."
"Ray was very troubled. Somehow he made Sabina angry—the last thing he meant to do. He's sorry now that he spoke. She thought he was considering himself, and he really was thinking for Abel."
"We must go on being patient. Next year I shall urge her to let Abel be sent to a boarding-school. That will be a great advantage every way."
So they talked and meantime Abel's sorrow ran into the channels of evil. It may be that the presence of Estelle had determined this misfortune; but he was ripe for it and his feeling prompted him to let his misery run over, that others might drink of the cup. He had long contemplated a definite deed and planned a stroke against Raymond Ironsyde; but he had postponed the act, partly from fear, partly because the thought of it was a pleasure. Inverted instincts and a mind fouled by promptings from without, led him to understand that Ironsyde was his mother's enemy and therefore his own. Baggs had told him so in a malignant moment and Abel believed it. To injure his enemy was to honour his mother. And the time had come to do so. He was ripe for it to-night. He told himself that Peter Grim would have approved the blow, and with his mind a chaos of mistaken opinions, at once ludicrous and mournful, he set himself to his task. He ate his supper as usual and went to bed; but when the house was silent in sleep, he rose, put on his clothes and hastened out of doors. He departed by a window on the ground floor and slipped into a night of light and shade, for the moon was full and rode through flying clouds.
The boy felt a youthful malefactor's desire to get his task done as swiftly as possible. He was impatient to feel the deed behind him. He ran through the deserted village, crossed a little bridge over the river, and then approached the Mill by a meadow below them. Thus he always came to see Mr. Baggs, or anybody who was friendly.