Bitterly now did I feel the truth of this, for God was taking His vengeance on me! I—I had broken His laws, I had yielded to the devil, I had hurled the crown of my manhood from me.
And I still stood alone, with bare head and burning eyes, while in my heart burned a scorching, tormenting, yet non-consuming fire.
Then a more terrible thought came. What I had done could never be undone. Never! Age upon age might pass away, but that fact, ghastly and black, would remain! It might be possible, I did not think He ever would, but it might be possible that in the far-off future God would forgive me. But then, even God could not undo the fact that I had killed my brother.
But I had not intended to throw him over the cliff. His death was due to an accident; I had not altogether yielded to the strivings of the devil. True, true, and yet murder was in my heart, for did I not hate him and had I not hated him for years.
"Whoso hateth his brother is a murderer." So said the disciple of the Son of God, and I had hated him, and now neither God nor eternity could undo what I had done.
I thought of my mother. Soon she would learn that Wilfred was dead, and then her sky would be black, and it would be I, Roger, who had blackened it. The deed which would bring her grey hair with sorrow to the grave, had been done by me.
"Ah," I thought, "if I could only cease to be, cease to think," but that, I knew, could never be. Had I hurled myself from that dizzy height, so that my battered body might be beside my brother's, the awful thing I had done would remain, and I should remain. I might kill the body, but I could not kill the soul; and self-murder would make my crime greater, not less.
Oh, how desolate the world was. The summer sky had no beauty; the fields, which I could still dimly see, were shorn of every loveliness.
Then I looked seaward, and the only visible object was the ghastly rock which was ever a nightmare to my soul.
What was it I saw there? It was a light, like the light I had seen on the night of my father's death, a weird, ghostly light, moving between the great grey prongs.