Then a sudden panic seemed to seize him. He pulled off his cap, and, holding it in both hands, stared into it as if in desperate protest against fate. A large tear fell into the crown, and then another and another. "I canna help it," he said, in a loud and sepulchral whisper. "Look out! Look out!"
And then, probably feeling that even in this he might be committing himself fatally, he got up, glanced fearfully about him, and scuttled away.
CHAPTER XLIX. "IF AUGHT'S FOR ME, REMEMBER IT."
Before he left the house at night, Murdoch had a brief interview with his mother.
"I am going to London as he went," he said,—"on the same errand. The end may be what it was before. I have felt very sure—but he was sure too."
"Yes," the woman answered, "he was very sure."
"I don't ask you to trust it—or me," he said. "He gave a life to it. I have not given a year, and he was the better man, a thousand-fold. I," he said, with a shadow falling on his face, "have not proved myself as he did. He never faltered from the first."
"No," she said. "Would to God he had!"