Joe came to Sorrowstones Spring at last, and cowered under the highroad wall, a field's-length off from his cottage.
"Hell alive, it's fit to rot a man's heart in his body, is wark on a neet like this!" he muttered. "If he'd nobbut come afore my fingers are stark an' stiff!"
He handled the crowbar lovingly, and began to talk to it. First he confided to it what he was set on doing, and then, as the waiting grew more tedious, he told it all that had gone before—dilating on Kate's beauty, their happiness before Griff came to spoil it, his lonely after-life, with only drink to sweeten it.
And to all this the slim, two-foot crowbar listened patiently; but it was cold in his grasp when he began, and cold when his story was done. It seemed callous to all claims of sympathy.
The cold and the beer between them sent Joe off into a fit of dizziness. He leaned hard against the wall to recover himself, and laughed thickly to the little iron bar.
"It's gooid hot blood we want, my beauty, thee an' me—thee to warm thy heart, an' me to warm my belly. Well, lass, we'll bide a bit longer; he can't be such a fearful while i' coming now.—What's that?"
Away up the road, far beyond the last of the stoups that could be seen from Sorrowstones, there sounded a faint pit-pat. On it came—pit-pat, pit-pat—the muffled beat of hoofs, striking through the snow to the frozen underground.
Joe moved from his sheltering wall. His sickness was forgotten, his crowbar passively awaited commands. Out of the whirling whiteness came a man and a horse, creeping warily down the steepest bit of the hill. The road ran between high banks of ling and bents, and on the right bank the quarrymaster waited. Nearer and nearer came the two figures; they moved from side to side of the road, to lessen the steepness of the descent, until at last they passed close to where Strangeways was cowering in the snow. Like a flash Joe sprang at his victim, and brought the crowbar down on his skull.
The rider's shoulders dropped forward, his head lying heavy between them. The horse, not counting on this sudden slackening of the reins, lost his footing, and came heavily to ground, his fore-feet doubled under him. His master flew out of the saddle, and lay, a shapeless heap, in the middle of the road.
The horse had broken both knees, and was crying piteously; but Strangeways never so much as heard it. He went to the dead man's body, and sat on his upturned breast. Into his brain stole the words of a grim jest that a comrade had passed with him not many days before.