"They'll not come back," he said. "They've had enough for to-night. If they'd known I was alone they'd have made a stand for it. They think they were in luck to get off." He came back and sat down. "They laid their plans better than I thought," he added. "They got over me for once, devil take 'em. How art tha now, lad?" Murdoch made the effort to rise and succeeded, though he was not very strong upon his feet, and sank into a chair feeling a little irritated at his own weakness. "Giddy," he answered, "and a trifle faint. It's a queer business. I went down as if I'd been shot. I have an hour and a half to steady myself before the next train comes in. Let me make the best of it." "You'll go to-night?" said Haworth. "There's a stronger reason than ever that I should go," he answered. "Let me get it out of the way and safe, for heaven's sake!" Haworth squared his arms upon the table and leaned on them. "Then," he said, "I've got an hour and a half to make a clean breast of it." He said it almost with a swagger, and yet his voice was hoarse, and his coolness a miserable pretense. "Ask me," he said, "how I came here!" And not waiting for a reply even while Murdoch gazed at him bewildered, he answered the question himself. "I come," he said, "for a good reason,--for the same reason that's brought me here every night you've been at work." Murdoch repeated his last words mechanically. He was not quite sure the man was himself. "Every night I've been at work?" "Aye, every one on 'em! There's not been a night I've not been nigh you and ready." A memory flashed across Murdoch's mind with startling force. "It was you I heard come in?" he cried. "It was not fancy." "Aye, it was me." There was a moment's silence between them in which Murdoch thought with feverish rapidity. "It was you," he said with some bitterness at last,--"_you_ who set the plot on foot?" "Aye, it was me." "I could have done the job I wanted to do in a quicker way," he went on, after a second's pause, "but that wasn't my humor. I'd a mind to keep out of it myself, and I knew how to set the chaps on as would do it in their own way." "What do you mean by 'it'?" cried Murdoch. "Were you devil enough to mean to have my blood?" "Aye,--while I was in the humor,--that and worse." Murdoch sprang up and began to pace the room. His strength had come back to him with the fierce sense of repulsion which seized him. "It's a blacker world than I thought," he said. "We were friends once--friends!" "So we were," he said, hoarsely. "You were the first chap I ever made friends with, and you'll be the last. It's brought no good to either of us." "It might," returned Murdoch, "if----"