His alert mind was not slow to fix upon his weakest spot. It was his home-life. His passionate love for Monica guided him unerringly to the one point in which he dreaded an attack most. This man Tug, as he knew him, was not one of the bolder class of antagonists. He would not openly assail him before the world. That could never be his way. He would attack subtly, and in the direction he was sure of hurting most. Hendrie himself knew where he could be hurt most. Did Leyburn?
Something very like despair gripped him, as, in fancy, he pictured Monica's scorn and loathing for the man who was her Frank's father, against the man for his apparent desertion of her dead sister, Audie. This was the shadow that had oppressed him ever since that fateful day on which he had learned that Frank was his own son. This was the burden he had borne as the just punishment for that crime he had committed so long ago. Now the hand of Fate still seemed to be moving on, and he felt instinctively that the woman he loved better than life itself must soon be told, and he must bow before the sentence her gentle lips might pass. He could not hope. He dared not. He knew he was at the mercy of a merciless enemy who would have no scruples as to how he accomplished his end.
His busy brain traveled on and on, over possibilities and impossibilities. His imagination had become feverishly active, and its hideous limits seemed unbounded.
But amid it all he still found it possible to draw one slight satisfaction, and it was a true index to his curiously savage manhood.
It was little enough, but it was the one bright spot on his drab horizon. He found it possible to draw satisfaction from the memory of that robbery of Tug's gold. Yes, he had many enough regrets for things he had done in those by-gone days, but he was truly glad of that passionate, almost insane moment of craving when he had robbed Austin Leyburn of all he possessed in the world.
Yes, it was good—but—no, he had not robbed him of quite all. He had left him—his life. Well, Austin Leyburn had best be careful what he did. Monica's love was more precious to him than perhaps Leyburn's gold had been to the wretched man who had so laboriously wrested it from the bosom of mother earth.
His moments were very dark as his horse made its way back to Deep Willows. They were so dark that they seemed almost impossible of ever lightening. Then, as so often happens in the midst of the blackest moments, there came a flash of revealing light. It was the desperate courage of the man suddenly rising superior to the false cowardice inspired by his love for his wife. Why should he not forestall Leyburn? Why not tell her his story himself? Why not make a desperate fight to rid himself for ever of the haunting shadow of that painful past? If lose her he must, it would be far better to lose her with the truth, the simple, plain facts upon his lips, than to be found guilty of endeavoring to wilfully deceive.
The complexity of this man was extraordinary. But whatever his faults or virtues, and the latter were few enough, his mainspring of character was a colossal courage that could not long be held under by baser considerations. He might rob, as he had done, he might even slay, yet through it all he would prove his manhood when the time for expiation came. Whatever Austin Leyburn's estimate of Alexander Hendrie he would find himself pitted against a superior manhood when he drew his sword upon him.
Reaching the home farm, Hendrie dismounted and left his horse with the waiting groom. He hurried off in the direction of the house and encountered Angus on his way from his office. The manager stopped him.
"Been around?" he inquired, without any lightness.