And he, what sacred things had he not known, what high purposes had he not guarded, only to dash them underfoot!
He shook his fist at the calm, inveterate star.
"Who 'll be the judge, then?" he asked fiercely, in a whisper more heart-breaking than a cry. "What's right, and what's wrong? And what is there left?"
He found no answer, and dropped his head again, shivering as in a fever-fit.
A horse, left alone in the island pasture where the tide had cut him off, whinnied out of the distant dark. Even in Marden's torment, the sound brought back that evening when his brother had returned. Memories and questions swarmed in his brain again, rioting. Why could not he that now lay there dead in the gully, why could not he have stayed away? The world was so big, and full of a million other mishaps. If he were to die, a drunken lurch on the string-piece of a pier, a slip on an icy foot-rope, and Fate would have been satisfied without this dreadful means. Or again, was it all a fault of his, Marden's?
