Without knowing it, she had protruded one white and coral foot beyond the protecting skirt. Gabriel Hirst saw it, and stood irresolute. Then he cried—a bitter, stifled cry, as of a dumb creature in pain—and raced for his life down the bank. At the end of the wood he ran into the arms of Griff Lomax.
"Hallo, what brings you here? Why, man, you look as if you had seen a ghost!" cried Griff.
The preacher was not so strong as he once had been. Tea and bread, his exclusive diet for days at a time, were beginning to tell on him. The excitement of the sermon, the more violent frenzy that had followed it, the clean pair of heels which he had finally shown to temptation, all had their effect. He was breathless, and the sweat was trickling down his face. His body was shaking as with ague. He leaned heavily against a gate; Griff saw that his eyes looked hunted.
"I've lost my ghosts, Lomax," he said brokenly. "They were what I lived by; my father handed them down to me, and I never thought to let them go. I can't see them any more, Griff—the Spirit coming down with a sweep of wings, and the Avenging Angel with a bloody sword in his hands, and the red hell flames licking at the unclean lips of the evil doers. They're lost—all lost."
He left the gate and began to pace up and down the path. Lomax put a strong arm through his.
"You're talking nonsense, old fellow!" he said quietly.
The preacher grew calmer for a while; the muscular grip on his arm, and the big voice telling him not to be a fool, gave him a childish feeling of security. He let his friend take him up through the wood and out among the moors on the other side; he opened his mouth wide and drank in great gulps of the wind. Then, on a sudden, he remembered the full measure of his sinning, and he shut his mouth with a click, and he groaned in bitterness of spirit.
"Griff," he said gravely, "you don't know what I've done. I came out of the chapel wrestling with the Devil: man, I could hear God rebuking me for my sins one minute and cheering me on to the fight the next. And then—I fell away. I saw a woman's face, and I lost every other thought, and I tumbled down the hillside like a madman."
Lomax gave a low mutter of surprise; he glanced sharply at the other's face, and saw that remorse was cutting deep furrows across the brow and beneath the eyes.