Now the fabric of his fortunes similarly collapsed, and he found all that had looked so healthy was flourishing upon foundations of putrescence and decay. No canker had eaten into his life and ruined it; no sudden misfortune had grown and turned what was fair to what was foul; but, in ignorance, with immense labour, he had built upon stark fraud and filth and his own dishonour; he had founded his life on falsehoods and sins; he had worshipped his God in unconsciousness of the truth; he had been drawn to closer and deeper intercourse with Christ through the cold-blooded villainy of a man. His ambitions, aims and future schemes were all rooted and flourishing in his own betrayal; and his God had suffered this appalling thing to come to pass, and denied him one dim hint or whisper of the truth. At the crucial moment, when Woodrow made him his heir, the Almighty had blinded Daniel's native instinct and not permitted even a suspicion of reality to be associated with the gift. All had combined against him; all had cozened his understanding: his wife, his master, his God. Man and Heaven had united to deceive him; and man, knowing the truth, had watched his sustained devotion and faith; and Heaven, knowing the truth, had accepted his worship and thanksgiving, had suffered his delusion to continue, had planned the horror of the end. Every wind of the night came to him with a new grief; every scent of the night brought a new agony; every voice of the night drove home the truth with an added torment. He looked up at the stars and asked them what he should do. From force of habit he knelt and called upon God. But he remembered that, in this matter, God was on the side of the enemy. Therefore he rose and went forward without prayer. By morning he had walked many miles along the foothills of the Moor; and then, after five o'clock, he went down to a railway station, waited for the first train, and travelled to Plymouth. He suffered himself to rest there for a time; and he washed and ate. Henceforth he was concerned with Hilary Woodrow and not with John Prout. He perceived clearly that the old man, who would have sacrificed his soul for Hilary, had helped his wife and Woodrow against him. He retraced events of many journeys. He thought of the days that he had been from home, and of the time spent by his wife at Dawlish. He forged a long and dreadful chain of horrible deceits that had never existed. He began to imagine an evil story which occupied a place in time long after the actual treachery was over and done. Upon the fact of his betrayal he built a mighty monument; yet this memorial had itself scarcely any existence in fact. That, however, mattered little. The truth without addition had been enough for Brendon. Day was turned to night in his mind, and he longed for the real night, that he might accomplish his purpose. About noon he took train to Dawlish, and reached it before three o'clock.