His passion and desire had vanished utterly. Phyl might have been a thousand miles away from him for all that he thought of her.
He rose up and came out into the sunlight, went to the well head, sat down on the frame and removed his shoe and sock. The mark of the bite was there between the adductor tendons. A red hot iron and a bottle of whisky might have saved him. He had not even a penknife to cut the wound out—He thought of Phyl, she could do nothing. He thought of the bar of the Charleston Hotel, and the verse of the song about the old hen with a wooden leg and the statement that it was just about time for another little drink, ran through his head.
Then suddenly the idea came to him that there might possibly be help at the village where he had obtained the food from the coloured woman. It was a long way off, but still it was a chance.
He put the sock in his pocket, put on the shoe and started. He ran for the first couple of hundred yards, then he slackened his pace, then he stopped holding one hand to his side.
The poison already had hold of him.
The game was up and he knew it. It was useless to go on, he would not live to reach the village or reaching it would die there.
And every one would pity him with that shuddering pity people extend to those who meet with a horrible form of death.
Death from snake bite was a low down business, it was no end for a Grangerson; but there in the swamp to the left a man might lie forever without being found out.
He turned from the road to the left and walked away among the trees.
The ground here sank beneath the foot, a vague haze hung above the marsh and the ponds. Here nothing happened but the change of season, night and day, the chorus of frogs and the crying of the white owl amidst the trees.