“Yes,” he muttered; “of course I must go and close that place up. Even if I go mad, that must not be known.”
He took a few steps instinctively towards the vault, and fell over something in the path, contriving, however, to save himself, so that he only came down upon his hands and knees.
The shock acted like a spell, and brought back his wandering mind.
“Who’s this?” he muttered. “Moredock?”
He passed his hands rapidly about the body before him, lying flat upon its back.
“Tom Candlish!” he ejaculated, as his hands came in contact, the one with a curiously-shaped breast-pin the young squire wore, the other with the bunch of charms and the locket he wore on his chain.
“Good heavens! What have I done? The man is dead!”
North started to his feet, trying hard to collect his wandering ideas, for he was at sea once more. He could not comprehend how Tom Candlish had contrived to get there, till he recalled the window, and at the same time recollected that he had struck at him again and again with all his might.
“Have I killed him?” he muttered; and, suffering still from the blow upon his head, his mental faculties seemed to be quite off their balance. The calm medical man, with his accurate judgment, was no longer there; but one full of wild excitement—one moment bubbling over with delirious joy at having triumphed over his enemy, of whom he had been madly jealous; the next, ready to shrink and tremble at the deed he had done.
He did not—he could not—pause to calculate how it had happened, beyond feeling that he must have beaten his enemy horribly, till he had in his last efforts struck him down, and then crawled out from the window to fall and die. He could not arrange all this in an orderly manner, for he was now seized with a frantic horror of discovery; and the question filled his mind, what was he—a murderer—to do?