The preacher began to understand matters, as he recovered from the struggle, from the surprise consequent on the miraculous fashion in which he had lifted Griff. There had been death in his mind when he chose the quarry as the meeting-place—a hazy, theoretic notion that one of them had better go over the edge. But he had lost all that in the stress of the fight; he had been bent only on throwing his enemy; he had never stopped to think how close they might be to the low wall that guarded the quarry from the moor. Yet here was he, leaning against the wall—it had saved him from falling—and peering down at the stagnant pool which lay, fifty feet below, at the bottom of Whins Quarry. That dull splash echoed and re-echoed in his ears; the faint light showed him no more than a few feet of the rock-face, but memory brought that surly pool before his eyes as plainly as if it had been broad day—and in fancy he saw there the body of his friend lying face upward to the stars.
With a start the preacher came to himself. He did not pause to call himself a murderer; he only knew that, if Lomax were dead, he had cut one half of himself clean away for ever. The man's great love for his friend—never quite realized till now—made the thought of Griff's death such unbearable agony that perforce he must do something. Yes, he must act. He had but one thought now—he might save old Griff, if that clear drop of fifty feet had not broken his neck. Perhaps he was now struggling in the water, too weak to save himself from drowning. He raced along the path of sliding shale that flanked the left of the quarry-edge, caught his foot against a rock less yielding than the rest, and fell headlong down the hill, at the foot of which he lay for awhile, stunned, among the rubble.
When he next opened his eyes, the moon had set. Still half dazed, he groped his way to the cart-track that led to the quarry; the starlight, faint above, was quenched altogether by the surly face of rock that towered above the pool. A night-jar, away up on the moor, railed at the silence; only the lurid fires of God's vengeance lit the darkness, and these were powerless to break the physical gloom. He shook off his stupor. There was a wild humour in his striking a lucifer-match to show him what God's fires had failed to render clear—but he saw not the humour. The light shone fitfully across the pool, and was swallowed up by the glooming quarry-face. There was nothing floating on the surface, save the rotting carcase of a dog.
The preacher stood motionless, almost calm. He was predestined to damnation, and the striving was over, once for all; there could be no return to the old life of fruitless prayer, of wasted fight. A loosened stone dropped into the water, and that fall, too, was predestined. All, all was foreknown: the good works of the just, the evil living of the sinful, were alike predestined; there was neither virtue in holiness, nor blame in wrong-doing, since both alike had been fixed from the beginning. All responsibility was shifted from the preacher's shoulders, and he felt happier than he had yet done through the long years of strife.
Gabriel Hirst grew almost curious, with a dumb, passionless curiosity. He wondered what form his punishment would take; whether retribution would be swift and final, or tortuous and long drawn out. Perhaps—nay, certainly—a touch of pride lay, all unguessed, at the bottom of his heart; it was, in a sense, a fine thing to be the very focus of an Avenging Universe.
He went out by the cart-road, and moved faster as he gained the heather. The motion warmed his blood and quickened his pulses; he remembered Greta—Greta, who shared his heart with the dead. He fell weak at that, and must have comfort. There was none on earth to give him comfort, save Greta. As a dumb brute eats the healing herb, not knowing the reason that underlies its instinct, so the preacher went straight to Hazel Dene and knocked at the miller's door. The kitchen clock struck ten as he waited under the porch.
"Who's there?" came Greta's voice, a little tremulous.
"Gabriel Hirst. For God's sake, open!"
The bolts flew back and Greta stood on the threshold.
"You frightened me, Mr. Hirst. Father is away for the night, and Nancy is in bed. I thought you might be——"