Only one idea occurred to him, and that was the natural one that occurs
to the most ignorant under the circumstances: he had slain this man, and
the penalty was death for death. He did not know that he wanted to
live, the shock had been too horrible that night; but he must act--he
must do something; and, yielding entirely to his impulses, he bent down,
and, with a wonderful effort of nervous force, raised the fallen man,
and stood thinking for a few moments.
Impulse moved him then; and, without further hesitation, he bore the
body down the steps to the door of the mausoleum.
The door yielded to his pressure, and he stepped in with his load, the
darkness proving no hindrance to him, for he knew the place so well that
he could come and go without touching the sides for guidance.
He stood right in the middle of the place for a few moments, thinking;
one brother hanging over his left shoulder, the other lying motionless
upon that cold stone slab, as he had lain all through the series of
experiments which had been tried.
"It is fate," he muttered, as he softly lowered his burden down upon the
sawdust-covered floor, the brothers side by side, save that the younger
was lower--nearer to his mother earth.
Then, in a quick, business-like way, North stepped to the door, passed
through, and locked it, and then served the iron gate in the railings
the same.
"I must fetch my instruments away some day," he muttered--"if I stay.
No one will seek him there. He will be supposed to have fled from me.
But Moredock?
"Moredock can be trusted; I can silence him," he said grimly. "He knew
who was there."
North stood thinking for a few minutes in the churchyard, half startled,
but feeling a certain relief as well as pleasure in the fact that his
rival was removed from his path.
Then that word "rival" seemed to strike him a mental blow, for it
brought up to his confused intellect why it was that he and Tom Candlish
had been rivals; and at this thought he once again saw Leo, the woman he
had loved, gazing wildly in his face; and, with a low moan, he
staggered, more than walked, from the churchyard, making instinctively
for home; but as he reached the sexton's cottage, the faint light
therein attracted him, and, feeling dizzy, he put his hand to his head,
to find that it was bleeding freely.
As he hesitated whether to go in or hurry on, the door, which had been
ajar, opened more widely, and a great, claw-like hand was thrust out,
and he was guided to the big Windsor chair.
"Hurt, doctor? All over blood? Don't say you didn't dress him down."
North made no answer, for the low-ceiled room seemed sailing round as he
turned his ghastly face and gazed in the speaker's eyes.
Volume 2, Chapter XV.
A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT.
"My turn now," said Moredock, with a low chuckle. "Times as he's given
me doses. He, he, he! I can give him one now."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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