"Four dead already, sir; four--and one soon to follow them, making five," he answered, his voice hushed to a whisper. "Master Johnny, it lies on me always, a dreadful weight never to be got rid of. When I was young, I had a sort of low fever, and used to see in my dreams some dreadful task too big to be attempted, and yet I had to do it; and the weight on my mind was awful. I didn't think, till now, such a weight could fall in real life. Sleeping or waking, sir, I see those four before me dead. Squire Todhetley told me that I had their lives on my soul. And it is so." I did not know what to answer. "So you see, sir, I don't think much of the imprisonment; if I did, I might be wanting to get the suspense over. It's not any term of imprisonment, no, not though it were for life, that can wash out the past. I'd give my own life, sir, twice over if that could undo it." Lease had his arm on the gate as he spoke, leaning forward. I could not help feeling sorry for him. "If people knew how I'm punished within myself, Master Johnny, they'd perhaps not be so harsh upon me. I have never had a proper night's rest since it happened, sir. I have to get up and walk about in the middle of the night because I can't lie. The sight of the dawn makes me sick, and I say to myself, How shall I get through the day? When bed-time comes, I wonder how I shall lie till morning. Often I wish it had pleased God to take me before that day had happened." "Why don't they get the inquest over, Lease?" "There's something or other always brought up to delay it, sir. I don't see the need of it. If it would bring the dead back to life, why, they might delay it; but it won't. They might as well let it end, and sentence me, and have done with it. Each time when I go back home through Crabb Lane, the men and women call out, 'What, put off again!' 'What, ain't he in gaol yet!' Which is the place they say I ought to have been in all along." "I suppose the coroner knows you'll not run away, Lease." "Everybody knows that, sir." "Some would, though, in your place." "I don't know where they'd run to," returned Lease. "They couldn't run away from their own minds--and that's the worst part of it. Sometimes I wonder whether I shall ever get it off mine, sir, or if I shall have it on me, like this, to the end of my life. The Lord knows what it is to me; nobody else does." You cannot always make things fit into one another. I was thinking so as I left Lease and went after Tod. It was awful carelessness not to have set the points; causing death, and sorrow, and distress to many people. Looking at it from their side, the pointsman was detestable; only fit, as the Squire said, to be hanged. But looking at it side by side with Lease, seeing his sad face, his self-reproach, and his patient suffering, it seemed altogether different; and the two aspects would not by any means fit in together.