Chief among this host walked one whose head and face were muffled from my sight, but who watched me, I knew, through the folds, with eyes that stared fixed and wide.
But now, indeed, the mist seemed to have got into my brain, and all things were hazy, and my memory of them is dim. Yet I recall passing Bromley village, and slinking furtively through the shadows of the deserted High Street, but thereafter all is blank save a memory of pain and toil and deadly fatigue.
I was stumbling up steps—the steps of a terrace; a great house lay before me, with lighted windows here and there, but these I feared, and so came creeping to one that I knew well, and whose dark panes glittered palely under the dying moon. And now I took out my clasp-knife, and, fumbling blindly, put back the catch (as I had often done as a boy), and so, the window opening, I clambered into the dimness beyond.
Now as I stumbled forward my hand touched something, a long, dark object that was covered with a cloth, and, hardly knowing what I did, I drew back this cloth and looked down at that which it had covered, and sank down upon my knees, groaning. For there, staring up at me, cold, contemptuous, and set like marble, was the smiling, dead face of my cousin Maurice.
As I knelt there, I was conscious that the door had opened, that some one approached, bearing a light, but I did not move or heed.
"Peter?—good God in heaven!—is it Peter?" I looked up and into the dilated eyes of Sir Richard. "Is it really Peter?" he whispered.
"Yes, sir—dying, I think."
"No, no—Peter—dear boy," he stammered. "You didn't know—you hadn't heard—poor Maurice—murdered—fellow—name of Smith—!"
"Yes, Sir Richard, I know more about it than most. You see, I am Peter Smith." Sir Richard fell back from me, and I saw the candle swaying in his grasp.
"You?" he whispered, "you? Oh, Peter!—oh, my boy!"