These simple words hurt poor John cruelly, for their business-like and even sordid tenour jarred upon his own great renunciation in a way that Stark little guessed. Lee's heart was numb; his mind had grown dreamy and incoherent now. Mechanically he took the windmill and handed Cecil a shilling. Then, without any word of farewell, he turned away and followed the departing crowds. He heard Cecil Stark say "God bless you!" as he went; but only a strange loathing of the money he carried rose in his mind. This mean detail of two guineas fretted him to madness. He could not see the matter as Cecil saw it; he jealously muffled his reason, and refused to behold in himself henceforth no more than that necessary thing--a lover's messenger. Slowly he returned over the Moor towards Fox Tor Farm, and the thought of all that he had lost swept down upon him like a storm in the wilderness. Temptations shook him then. He turned the toy of bone about in his hand. He might have crushed it and stamped it down under the bog in a moment. But nothing could crush the deed done. He relapsed into a sullen and ferocious sorrow. His feet dragged under him. A sense of age swept over him, and along with it came bitter remorse that he had flung his fate away to another man and set no store upon fortune's priceless gifts. A savage loathing of himself awoke in his spirit. He hated the flesh that he was clad in, poured contumely upon his own head and cried out aloud in the loneliness that his repulsive weakness proclaimed him what he was: a bastard and a creature fit only for the scorn of men. He cumbered the earth. None was the better for him. The cur that fled from a badger had greater courage; the baying foxhound more pluck, than had he. His grandmother's words in the past returned to his memory and clashed in his head like bells rung by demons. This was how he had employed her wisdom; this was how he had cast away his grand opportunity to win fortune and love. Siward's Cross rose before him and he stood near the home of his childhood. He sat awhile beside the hoary monument and leant his back against it. Then he turned and examined it with listless eyes, and watched the shadow cast by its squat arms darken the heather. Long he delayed; and, at last, as the sun, turning westward, warmed the Moor and touched the cross with a gentle and roseate glory, the benignant, evening hour found out John Lee, soothed his giant sorrow and set its seal upon him. This venerable stone had power to comfort the lad's grief. He began to think less of himself and more of Grace Malherb. Her joy grew out of the sunset light; her young life's story opened before him; he saw a ribbon of pure gold stretching down into the West, where the sun was setting beyond a distant sea; and he knew that it was her road home. Great words came to his recollection: "He that loseth his life shall save it," was written for him in the soft and mellow earth-shadows of sunset.