Christopher went in. The mother was sitting dry-eyed and staring, her hands twisted in her coarse apron. She swayed to and fro with mechanical rhythm, and paid no heed at all to the two weeping women who kept up a flow of low-uttered sentences of well-meant but inadequate comfort. Christopher bent over her and took both her hands, neither remembering the other nor seeing aught but the mother with a burden of grief slowly dropping on her. "Ann," he whispered, "Ann, there was no choice for me. Forgive me if you can, for being alive." The strained, ghastly face twitched and she stopped swaying and looked at him uncomprehendingly as he knelt before her. "They say he's dead, he's dead. My boy Dick," she moaned. Christopher put his arm round her. "God help mothers," he gasped, under his breath, as the poor, shaking woman dropped her head on his shoulder with an outbreak of fierce weeping. CHAPTER XXXV The Roadmaker lay at the edge of the cliff and looked out on a green sea flecked with white, whose restless soul, holding to some eternal purpose, forever attains and relinquishes in peace and storm, in laughter or tears. A week had passed since the attempt on Christopher's life for which Ann Barty had paid so high a price. Happily for Christopher, it had been a week so full of affairs that although they were mostly in connection with the one thing, yet they claimed his outward active attention to the exclusion of the inner point of view. The unhappy man from Birmingham was found, when he recovered from the seizure, to be in a semi-imbecile state with no knowledge of his deed and was accordingly handed over to the authorities proper to his condition. He was easily traced to the works from which he had been harshly enough discharged, as it turned out on investigation, and Christopher came into active opposition with the directors of the Steel Axle Company over the question of providing for his wife and children. It had been impossible to keep the affair quiet and there had been innumerable reporters to circumvent, and more innumerable friends from far and near, eager to express their interest in his providential escape. Little Dick Barty received more honour in death than in life and the bereaved mother drew more consolation from the impressive funeral than poor Christopher. Mr. Saunderson bustled down in well-meant concern for Christopher's well-being, and received certain emphatic instructions, which he took with shrewd docility, and a wink of his eye to the world.