In half an hour's time Murdoch had left Broxton far behind him. He left the open road and rambled across fields and through lanes. The people in the farm-houses, who knew him, saw him pass looking straight before him and walking steadily like a man with an end in view. His mind was full of one purpose--the determination to control himself and keep his brain clear. "_Now_," he said, "let me think it over--now let me look at it in cold blood." The effort he made was something gigantic; it was a matter of physical as well as mental force. He had wavered and been vague long enough. Now the time had come to rouse himself through sheer power of will, or give up the reins and drift with the current, a lost man. At dusk he reached Dillup, and roamed about the streets, half conscious of his surroundings. The Saturday-night shopping was going on, and squalid women hurrying past him with their baskets on their arms glanced up, wondering at his dark face and preoccupied air. "He's noan Dillup," they said; one good woman going so far as to add that "she did na loike th' looks on him neyther," with various observations upon the moral character of foreigners in general. He saw nothing of the sensation he created, however. He rambled about erratically until he felt the need of rest, and then went into a clean little shop and bought some simple food and ate it sitting upon the tall stool before the counter, watched by the stout, white-aproned matron in charge. "Tha looks poorly, mester," she said, as she handed him his change. He started a little on hearing her voice, but recovered himself readily. "Oh no," he said. "I'm right enough, I think. I'm an American, and I suppose we are rather a gaunt-looking lot as a rule." "'Merikin, art tha?" she replied. "Well to be sure! Happen that's it" (good naturedly). "I've allus heerd they wur a poor color. 'Merikin! Well--sure-_ly_!" The fact of his being an American seemed to impress her deeply. She received his thanks (she was not often thanked by her customers) as a mysterious though not disagreeable result of his nationality, and as he closed the door after him he heard, as an accompaniment to the tinkling of the shop-bell, her amiably surprised ejaculation, "A 'Merikin! Well--sure-_ly_!" A few miles from Broxton there was a substantial little stone bridge upon which he had often sat. In passing it again and again it had gradually become a sort of resting place for him. It was at a quiet point of the road, and sitting upon it he had thought out many a problem. When he reached it on his way back he stopped and took his usual seat, looking down into the slow little stream beneath, and resting against the low buttress. He had not come to work out a problem now; he felt that he had worked his problem out in the past six hours. "It was not worth it," he said. "No--it was not worth it after all."