After leaving her Murdoch did not go home. He turned his back upon the village again, and walked rapidly away from it, out on the country road and across field paths, and did not turn until he was miles from Broxton.
Of late he had been more than usually abstracted. He had been restless, and at times nervously unstrung. He had slept ill, and spent his days in a half-conscious mood. More than once, as they walked together, Floxham had spoken to him amazed.
"What's up wi' thee, lad?" he had said. "Art dazed, or hast tha takken a turn an' been on a spree?"
One night, when they were together, Haworth had picked up from the floor a rough but intricate-looking drawing, and, on handing it to him, had been bewildered by his sudden change of expression.
"Is it aught of yours?" he had asked.
"Yes," the young fellow had answered; "it's mine."
But, instead of replacing it in his pocket, he had torn it slowly into strips, and thrown it, piece by piece, into the fire, watching it as it burned.
It was not Janey's eminently practical observations which had stirred him to-night. He had been drifting toward this feverish crisis of feeling for months, and had contested its approach inch by inch. There were hours when he was overpowered by the force of what he battled against, and this was one of them.
It was nearly midnight when he returned, and his mother met him at the door with an anxious look. It was a look he had seen upon her face all his life; but its effect upon himself had never lessened from the day he had first recognized it, as a child.
"I did not think you would wait for me," he said. "It is later than I thought."