How they all stared. God help him! unhappy wretch! He stood up unawares, feeling as if he hung suspended by some waving thread of chance over an abyss. Now he was falling in wild vertigo, misery, and shame. "My lad," said the vicar, very pitifully, yet authoritatively, in the way in which it was natural to address Elizabeth Murray's son, "I hope there's no intention to deceive in what you've done. Why should you try to conceal what all can see--that you are Abel Murray yourself?" He gave one wild glance round him. They were all staring at him, the room turning round, the light changed to darkness, nothing but a mist of terrible, upbraiding, wondering faces. Then he became sensible of one which was an embodied insult, a sneer, a smile, a look which spoke enjoyment of his misery. That drove him out of himself: he struck a blind blow towards the insulting face, and with a cry, half moan, half yell, half laugh of despair and madness, turned and dashed through the circle. Who might be in his way he knew not, and how he got out of the room he knew not. He turned his back upon them all, and dashed wildly out of the house. CHAPTER VIII. Abel fled from the presence of those who seemed to him his enemies and persecutors in a state of mind impossible to describe. The excitement in him had risen beyond the bounds of endurance. All power of resistance was over, along with all possibility of making a stand against evil fortune. He was not bad enough for his _rôle_. He could lie by concealment, and by inference, but not directly and in so many words; and the utter self-abandonment and unspeakable humiliation of his flight meant more than mere discovery: it meant complete moral ruin and downfall. Nothing but the entire giving in and relinquishment of every hope, the sense that he had no further step to take, no expedient, no way of escape, could have overwhelmed all his powers so dismally and so completely. For one moment only he had stood at bay, seeing as through a mist the sudden lightening and darkening of the faces round him--lightening of understanding, darkening of disapproval: he felt both to his very heart with a horrible anguish beyond all experience. He had been ashamed of his low condition, of his peasant birth, of his homely family, and this shame had made him do ignoble things; but he was not all ignoble. A strong perception, when too late, of the simple truth which might have saved him, contended in his mind with the bitterness of his shame and the rage of his despair. No possibility of anything which could be done to sot him right suggested itself to his frantic soul. It was all over: there was no longer any way of repentance, any rehabilitation for him. The weakness of his nature had found him out. Farewell everything--love, friendship, honour, credit! He would live no longer among the people who had found him out; he would not look them in the face again. He darted into the woods, running at full speed, not