Gray did not thrust the thought from him; he let his mind dwell upon it, he regarded it steadily; for his eyes had been opened to see in what the real happiness and worth of life consisted. Through suffering and humiliation he had learnt to measure things at their right value. In contact with a man who had deliberately chosen evil to be his good he had been taught what evil meant. The temptation that had once been too strong for him was no longer a temptation. He could see the full baseness of it now. Better death, better open confession and a dishonoured name, than life and honour bought by treachery and guile.
The trees stood up dark and funereal against the cloudless sky. His path lay beneath them, and on towards the moonlit east.
"Come, we must start, old fellow," Gray said to the reluctant horse, and he began to descend the slope of the ridge.
CHAPTER X
A GRIM SORT OF PICNIC.
The dawn was breaking when Gray approached the spot where Lumley lay. He had walked the whole distance, for his horse was evidently too dead-beat to carry him. He had had no difficulty in keeping to the right track. Indeed he had calculated so well, that when he first stopped and "coo-eed" to make sure he was going right, Lumley's answer had come from a point straight ahead, and no considerable distance off.
Lumley had seen him before that call. Though he had told himself again and again that Gray would never come back, that it was too much in his interest to leave him there to die, his eyes had anxiously watched the western horizon.
There had been something in Gray's look when he had spoken his last words that had impressed Lumley powerfully, and so it was not altogether a surprise to him when he at last could distinguish a dark, moving object against the sky. The surprise came later when he was able to discern that Gray was leading his horse with him.
A strange change came over Lumley's face when he realized that; his thin lips set themselves together, his brows contracted with a frown of anxious thought, his eyes grew like the stealthy, waiting eyes of a beast of prey which has not the strength to attack its victim in the open, but lurks in ambush and springs upon it unawares.