"Taking leave of the place. I've given it up."
His visitor uttered a passionate ejaculation.
"You are mad!" he said.
"Aye," bitterly. "Mad enow."
The next instant a strange sound burst from him,—a terrible sound, forced back at its birth. His struggle to suppress it shook him from head to foot; his hands clinched themselves as if each were a vise. Murdoch turned aside.
When it was over, and the man raised his face, he was trembling still, and white with a kind of raging shame.
"Blast you!" he cried, "if there's ever aught in your face that minds me o' this, I'll—I'll kill you!"
This Murdoch did not answer at all. There was enough to say.
"You are going to share it with Ffrench?" he said.
"Aye, with that fool. He's been at me from the start. Naught would do him but he must have his try at it. Let him. He shall play second fiddle, by the Lord Harry!"
He began plucking at some torn scraps of paper, and did not let them rest while he spoke.
"I've been over th' place from top to bottom," he said. "I held out until to-night. To-night I give in, and as soon as I left 'em I came here. Ten minutes after it was done I'd have undone it if I could—I'd have undone it. But it's done, and there's an end on it."
He threw the scraps of paper aside and clenched his hand, speaking through his teeth.
"She's never given me a word to hang on," he said, "and I've done it for her. I've give up what I worked for and boasted on, just to be brought nigher to her. She
