He was fond of walking, and was glad to escape from Downing Street and from the House for a single evening; so he strode along down the path with a swinging gait, though with a heart not light enough for the full enjoyment of his lovely surroundings.
The by-path he had taken was that which leads over the hills from Godalming past Field Place to the little old-world village of Compton. Having crossed the ploughed lands, he entered a thick coppice, where the path began to run down with remarkable steepness into wide meadows, on the other side of which lay a dark wood. The narrow path running through the coppice terminated at a stile which gave entrance to the park-like meadow-land.
Descending this path he halted at the stile, leaning against it. Alone in that rural solitude, far removed from the mad hurry of London life, he stood to think. Each gust of wind brought down a shower of brown leaves from the oaks above, and the only other sound was the cry of a pheasant in the wood.
For at least five minutes he stood motionless. Then he suddenly roused himself, and some words escaped his lips:
“How strange,” he murmured, “that my footsteps should lead me to this very spot, of all others! Why, I wonder, has Fate directed me here?”
He turned and gazed slowly round upon the scene spread before him, the green meadows, the dark wood, the sloping hill with its bare, brown fields, and the Hog’s Back rising in the far distance, with the black line of the telegraph standing out against the sky. With slow deliberation he took in every feature of the landscape. Then, facing about, with his back to the stile, his eyes wandered up the steep path by which he had just descended from the crest of the hill.
“No,” he went on in a strange, low voice, speaking to himself, “it has not changed—not in the least. It is all just the same to-day, as then—just the same.” He sighed heavily as he leaned back upon the wooden rail and gazed up the ascent, brown with its carpet of acorns and fallen leaves. “Yes,” he continued at last, “it is destiny that has led me here, to this well-remembered spot for the last time before I die—the justice which demands a life for a life.”
Throughout the district it would not have been easy to find a more secluded spot than the small belt of dense wood, half of which lay on either side of the footpath. So steep was this path that considerable care had to be exercised during its descent, especially in autumn, when the damp leaves and acorns were slippery, or in winter, when the rain-channels were frozen into precipitous slides.
“A life for a life!” he repeated slowly with a strange curl of the lip. He permitted himself to speak aloud because in that rural, solitude he had no fear of eavesdroppers. “I have lived my life,” he said, “and now it is ended. My attempted atonement is all to no purpose, for to-day, or to-morrow, a voice as from the grave will arise to condemn me—to drive me to take my life!”
He glanced at his watch.