After a flood we find backwaters where promiscuous matter drifts in circles—straw, snags of wood, a dead sheep, a broken chair; so was it in the mind of Stephen Saltren. His ideas were thrown into confusion; thoughts and fancies, most varied and incongruous, jostled each other, without connection. The discovery that his wife had lied to him in the matter of the parentage of Giles and the guilt of Lord Lamerton, following on the excitement in which he had been through the encounter with his enemy, had sufficed to paralyse his judgment, and make his thoughts swerve about incoherently.
He was aware that he had committed a great mistake, he knew that his position was precarious; but his confidence in his vision, and the mission with which he was entrusted remained unshaken, and this confidence justified to his conscience the crime that he had committed, if, indeed, he had committed one. But in the gyration of thoughts in his brain, only one fact stood out clearly—that a blue-bottle fly menaced the corpse, and that it was his duty to drive the insect away.
He was engaged on this obligation, when a hand touched him, and on looking round he saw Patience Kite.
“Captain Saltren,” said the woman, “why are you here? I saw you both on top of the cleave, and I do know that he did not fall by chance. I will not tell of you.”
He looked at her with blank eyes.
“Others may have seen you besides myself. You must not be found here.”
“I am glad,” said he dreamily, talking to himself, not to her, “I am glad that I had, myself, no occasion against him. I thought I had, but I had not.”
“Come with me,” said Mrs. Kite, “folks are near at hand. I hear them.”
He looked wistfully at the dead face.
“I cannot,” he said.