"Aye," grimly, "I've said it before. Like enough I shall say it again. It sticks to me. We've been good friends, after a manner, and that makes it stick to me. I don't say you're to blame. I haven't quite made the thing out yet. We're of a different build, and--there's been times before when I haven't quite been up to you. But we've been friends, after a manner, and now th' time's come when we're done with that." "Done with it!" repeated Murdoch, mechanically. "Aye," meeting his glance fully, "done with it! We'll begin fair and square, lad. It's done with. Do you think," with deadly coolness, "I'd stop at aught if th' time come?" He rose a little from his seat, bending forward. "Naught's never come in my way, yet, that's stopped me," he said. "Things has gone agen me and I've got th' best on 'em in one way or another. I've not minded how. I've gone on till I've reached this. Naught's stopped me--naught never shall!" He fell back in his chair and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. "I wish," he said, "it had been another chap. I never thought of you--not once." CHAPTER XXV. "I SHALL NOT TURN BACK." Murdoch went out into the night alone. When he found himself outside the iron gate he stood still for a moment. "I will not go home yet," he said; "not yet." He knew this time where he was going when he turned his steps upon the road again. He had only left the place a few hours before. The moonlight gave it almost a desolate look, he thought, as he passed through the entrance. The wind still swayed the grass upon the mounds fitfully, and the headstones cast darker shadows upon them. There was no shadow upon the one under which Stephen Murdoch rested. It lay in the broad moonlight. Murdoch noticed this as he stopped beside it. He sat down upon the grass, just as he had done in the afternoon. "Better not go home, just yet," he said again. "There is time enough." Suddenly an almost unnatural calmness had fallen upon him. His passions and uncertainties of the past few months seemed small things. He had reached a climax and for a moment there seemed time enough. He thought of the past almost coldly--going over the ground mentally, step by step. It was as if he thought of the doings of another man--one who was younger and simpler and whose life was now over. "There are a good many things that are done with," he said mechanically, recalling Haworth's words. He thought of the model standing in its old place in the empty room. It was a living thing awaiting his coming. The end might be anything--calamity, failure, death!--but to-night he had taken his first step toward that end. "To-night I shall begin as he began," he thought; "to-night."