"Not killed, my dear, at laist not by we, but we c'n drive en away."
"How, Mrs. Pethick?"
"Prayer, zur; prayer."
Leicester laughed.
"'Tes true, zur. Ther's 'ope fer the wust. As I zed to Franky Flew at the last revival, I zed, 'Franky,
'While the lamp holds out to burn,
The vilest sinner may return!'"
"And what then, Mrs. Pethick?"
"Why, then you become a new man, zur."
A little while later he left the house. Of course it was all nonsense, nevertheless the simple woman's talk made him better. The storm had now gone, and the moors were bathed in evening sunlight. It was a wonderful panorama which stretched out before him. The moors, which two hours before were dark and forbidding, were now wondrous in their beauty. And sunlight had done it all! Sunlight!
All through the evening he sat and thought. It seemed, from the look in his eyes, that a new purpose had come into his life. The next day he left his lonely lodgings, and found his way back to London. He went to a part of the city which was far away from his old haunts, and to which he was an utter stranger. No one recognised him, no one knew him in the little hotel to which he went. He gave his name as Robert Baxter, as he had given it to the old woman on the moors. Why he had come to London he knew not, except that a great longing had come into his heart to be again in the midst of the great surging life of the city. Nevertheless he stayed in his room at the hotel. After a pretence at eating, he picked up a newspaper. He glanced through it carelessly. He had lost interest in life. The reports concerning the General Election did not interest him. What mattered which set of puppets were at Westminster? The whole business was an empty mockery. Presently, however, a paragraph chained his attention: