"You are ill!" said I, bending over him.
"I must reach Deptford—she's buried at Deptford, and I shall die to-night—O Lord, give me strength!" he panted.
"Deptford is miles away," said I.
Now, as I spoke, he lifted himself upon his hands and stared up at me. I saw a haggard, hairy face, very thin and sunken, but a fire burned in the eyes, and the eyes seemed, somehow, familiar.
"You!" he cried, and spat up in the air towards me; "devil!" he cried, "Devil Vibart." I recoiled instinctively before the man's sudden, wild ferocity, but, propping himself against the bank, he shook his hand at me, and laughed.
"Devil!" he repeated; "shade!—ghost of a devil!—have you come back to see me die?"
"Who are you?" I cried, bending to look into the pale, emaciated face; "who are you?"
"A shadow," he answered, passing a shaking hand up over his face and brow, "a ghost—a phantom—as you are; but my name was Strickland once, as yours was Devil Vibart. I am changed of late—you said so in the Hollow, and—laughed. You don't laugh now, Devil Vibart, you remember poor John Strickland now."
"You are the Outside Passenger!" I exclaimed, "the madman who followed and shot at me in a wood—"
"Followed? Yes, I was a shadow that was always behind you—following and following you, Satan Vibart, tracking and tracking you to hell and damnation. And you fled here, and you fled there, but I was always behind you; you hid from me among lowly folk, but you could not escape the shadow. Many times I would have killed you—but she was between—the Woman. I came once to your cottage; it was night, and the door opened beneath my hand—but your time was not then. But—ha!—I met you among trees, as I did once before, and I told you my name—as I did once before, and I spoke of her—of Angela, and cried her name—and shot you—just here, above the brow; and so you died, Devil Vibart, as soon I must, for my mission is accomplished—"