Philip walked fast. Here was the way of escape from the evil that beset his path. Fate was stretching out her hands to him. When men had done wrong, they did yet more wrong to elude the consequences of their first fault; but there was no need for that in his case. The hour was late. A strong breeze was blowing off the sea. It flicked his face with salt as he went swinging down the hill into the town. His blood was a-fire. He had a feeling, never felt before, of courage and even ferocity. Something told him that he was not so good a man as he had been, but it was a tingling pleasure to feel that he was a stronger man than before. Should he tell Kate? No! Let the thing go on; let it end. After it was over she would see where their account lay. Thinking in this way, he laughed aloud. The town was quiet when he came to it. So absorbed had he been that, though the air was sharp, he had been carrying his cloak over his arm. Now he put it on, and drew the hood close over his head. A dog, a homeless cur, had begun to follow at his heels. He drove it off, but it continued to hang about him. At last it got in front of his feet, and he stumbled over it in one of his large, quick strides. Then he kicked the dog, and it crossed the dark street yelping. He was a worse man, and he knew it. He let himself into the house with his latch-key, and banged the door behind his back. But no sooner had he breathed the soft, woolly, stagnant air within than a change came over him. His ferocious strength ebbed away, and he began to tremble. The hall passage and staircase were in darkness. This was by his orders--coming in late, he always forgot to put out the gas. But the lamp of his room was burning on the candle rest at the stairhead, and it cast a long sword of light down the staircase well. Chilled by some unknown fear, he had set one foot on the first tread when he thought he heard the step of some one coming down the stairs. It was a familiar step. He was sure he knew it. It must be a step he heard daily. He stopped, and the step seemed to stop also. At that moment there was a shuffling of slippered feet on an upper landing, and Jem-y-Lord called down, “Is it you, your Honour?” With an effort he answered, “Yes.” “Is anything the matter?” called the man-servant. “There's somebody coming downstairs, isn't there?” said Philip. “Somebody coming downstairs?” repeated the man-servant, and the light shifted as if he were lifting the lamp. “Is it you coming down, Jem?” “Me coming down? I'm here, holding the lamp, your Honour.” “Another of my fancies,” thought Philip; and he laid hold of the handrail, and started afresh. The step came on. He knew it now; it was his own step. “An echo,” he told himself. “A dream,” he thought, “a mirage of the mind;” and he compelled himself to go up. The step came down. It passed him on the stairs, going by the wall as he went by the rail, with an irresistible down-drive, headlong, heavily.