“It’s awful—awful!” his dry, bloodless lips kept repeating. “And I’m to blame for it all! I’m the only one who is really to blame. I thought some of the rest should help shoulder the load, but I was wrong. It’s up to me; I can see that plainly enough at last. If I’d only seen it in the first place, perhaps—perhaps this terrible thing might not have happened.”
After a time he remembered Osgood, and halted, looking back toward the quarry.
“Why doesn’t he come? Why is he staying there? He can’t do anything now. Well, perhaps it’s best that I should go it alone. That’s what I ought to do. No one else should be seen with me. I must face this thing by myself. What will they do with me? I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is that I can never, never forget, if I live to be a thousand years old.”
His teeth set, he crippled onward, his ankle, if possible, causing him greater distress than ever, though it seemed as a mere nothing compared with the anguish of his remorseful and repentant soul. Not once were the shooting pains sufficient to wring a whimper or a groan from him. His mind was made up at last; he had decided what he would do, and he was almost fierce in his eagerness to do it before he should weaken or falter.
The South Shore Road, approaching the railroad at one point, promised an easier course to follow, and he abandoned the ties. Vaguely he wondered what the hour could be, and looked for some sign of approaching dawn, as it seemed that the night must be far spent. To him that night had stretched itself to the length of a lifetime. Into it had been crowded experiences which had wrought in this boy a complete change of heart. In the moulding of his character such experiences must indeed have a powerful effect.
Beyond the river, as he drew near the dam at the lower end of the lake, he could see a few lights still shining palely in the windows of the village. Little had he imagined, when he first came to this small, despised country town, that here he was to face the first great crisis of his life. Here, it now seemed, he had met with disaster that meant his complete undoing.
The little railroad station on the southern side of the river was dark and deserted. Near it he halted again, tempted by the thought that somewhere around those black buildings he might hide until the first train should pull out in the morning—might hide there, and, sneaking aboard that train at the last moment, succeed, after all, in making his escape.
“But I won’t do it!” he suddenly snarled. “I attempted to run away like a coward, and this is what I’ve come to. I won’t try it again. I’ll face the music and pretend that I’ve got a little manhood left.”
Beneath the span of the bridge the water flowed swift and silent, save for a few faint whisperings and gurglings. Looking down at it, he drew away from the railing, fearful that he might be tempted to leap and end it all. Had he been met at the foot of Main Street by officers, waiting to place him under arrest, he would not have been surprised, and would have offered no resistance.
Once before upon this same night he had sneaked up Cross Street, and again he followed the same course. Something like a powerful magnet now seemed drawing him on, although as yet he but faintly realized that he was moving toward Hooker’s home as fast as he could.