He walked with bent head and arms slack. He often took these lonely walks, undaunted by either storm or swelter. He knew that Janey missed him, but he could not keep his body still while his mind ran to and fro so desperately. His walks were full of dark and furious planning of schemes that came to nothing. He roamed aimlessly through the country, without noticing where he went--except that he half unconsciously avoided the roads and wider lanes. He was desperate because his brain worked so slowly, a cloud seemed to lie on it, and he had a tendency to lose the thread of his ideas after he had followed them a little way. This afternoon he was wandering towards the valley of the hammer ponds. It was nearly seven when he came to Furnace Wood. The sun was swimming to the west through whorls of heat. A sullen glow crawled over the sky, nearly brown in the west. The air hung heavy in the wood, laden with the pungency of midsummer flowers and grasses--scarcely a leaf stirred, though now and then an unaccountable rustling shudder passed through the thickets. Weariness dropped on Nigel like a cloak--he was used to it. It was not really physical, only the deadly striving of his soul reaching out to his body and exhausting it. He flung himself down in a clump of bracken and tansy, sinking down in it, till everything was shut out by the tall, earth-smelling stalks. This was what he often found himself longing for with a desperate physical desire--a little corner, cool and quiet and green, shut off from life, where he could drowse--and forget. This evening only the first part of his desire was satisfied. He had his corner, but he could not drowse in it. His limbs lay inert, but his thoughts kicked painfully. His brain hammered with old impressions, which, instead of wearing away with time, each day bored and jarred with renewed power. He was the victim of an abnormally acute mentality--just as to a swollen limb the lightest touch is painful, so to Nigel's brain inflamed with grief and struggle, every impression was like a blow, an enduring source of agony. He heard footsteps on the path. No one could see him--it was still quite light in the fields, but in the wood was dusk and a blurring of outlines; besides, he was deeply buried in the tall stalks. However, though he could not be seen, he could see, for on the path stood a golden pillar of sunshine into which the footsteps must pass. Nigel wondered if it could be Lowe, returning early for some reason from Shovelstrode. But the steps did not sound heavy enough, and the next minute he saw the white of a woman's dress through the trees. In an instant his limbs had shrunk together, for another of those sickening blows had smitten his brain. The figure had passed out of the pillar of sunset, but he had seen Tony Strife as she went by.