This controversy went on swift and low-toned, while the others stood scarcely listening. Roger was full of the excitement of despair; he had been warned that the warrant was out to arrest him and the officers on their way. What could he say against it? There was every proof that he was the man. He had been traced to the fatal spot, he had been seen speeding like a ghost up the hillside afterwards; he had given no alarm; and there had been that fatal quarrel the day before. Every fact was against him, even to a blood-stain on his dress, which he had got unawares as he pushed through the brushwood to see what it was the madman had done. By no way but by giving the madman up could he clear himself. And there was no time to think; all through that day he had fancied that every one shrank from him and avoided him. When the old village constable, whom he had known all his life, ventured to hint at his danger, it seemed to Roger, impetuous and wretched as he was, that there was but one thing for him to do. And he had plunged away through the woods in the twilight as Abel Murray had done before him. He would go if Lily would go with him. To this he made up his mind with the obstinate simplicity of his nature. What was there at home to make him desire to stay? He could neither marry as he liked nor live as he liked. His sister, the only bright thing in the house, was plunged into trouble. There was no comfort wherever he looked. If he had Lily to go with him, he would go. As for Lily, she stood in a wilder excitement, still feeling her fate in the balance. She did not think of herself as having any choice. She seemed to be suspended between a wild agony of happiness and a dreary abyss of evil. To be raised, giddy, to the height she did not realise, or dropped horribly into the pit below, was an affair of a minute or two. She stood breathless, waiting--with her eyes wavering between her mother and her lover, not knowing what was to be. "Sir," said Elizabeth, breaking from her son's detaining hold, "you're doing a great thing for me, and I'll do a great thing for you. You'll promise me to wed my Lily? You'll vow to me afore God that she shall be your wife?" "I promise you before God," said Roger, taking the passive girl by the hand. "Then take her--take her--before I repent. Oh, go, my lass! go with him and be a good wife to him, and make it up to him, if woman can. Go! afore I repent. I'm buying one child with another," said Elizabeth, lifting up her hands, wild tears bursting from her eyes. "I'm giving a life for a life. Oh, Lord! forgive a poor woman driven out of her senses, for I'm doing a base action. Go, go! afore I repent!" CHAPTER X.