For he knew that nearly all these attempted escapes result in utter failure. The unhappy, deluded victims are recaptured, or drowned, or shot. Sitting there in his shock of agony, his dazed eyes gazing out to the fire, a prevision that death in one shape or other would be his brother's fate, if he did make the rash venture, seated itself firmly within him, as surely and vividly as though he had seen it in some fortuneteller's magic crystal. "Mother," he said, in a low tone, as he took her hand, and the door closed on Ann Hopley, "I understand it all now. I thought, simple that I was, that I had understood it before: and that you were but striving to find a way of conveying trifles in the shape of comforts to Adam. This is dreadful." "What is the matter with you?" cried Mrs. Andinnian. "You look ready to die." "The matter is, that this has shocked me. I pray Heaven that Adam will not be so foolhardy as to attempt to escape!" "And _why_ should he not?" blazed forth Mrs. Andinnian. Karl shook his head. "In nine cases out of ten, the result is nothing but death." "And the tenth case results in life, in liberty!" she rejoined, exultantly. "My brave son does well to try for it." Karl hid his eyes. The first thought, in the midst of the many tumultuously crowding his brain, was the strangely different estimation different people set on things. Here was his mother glorying in that to-be-attempted escape as if it were some great deed dared by a great general: _he_ saw only its results. They could not be good; they must be evil. Allowing that Adam did escape and regain his liberty: what would the "liberty" be? A life of miserable concealment; of playing at hide-and-seek with the law; a world-wide apprehension, lying on him always, of being retaken. In short, a hunted man, who must not dare to approach the haunts of his fellows, and of whom every other man must be the enemy. To Karl the present life of degrading labour would be preferable to that. "Do you wish to keep him there for life--that you may enjoy the benefit of his place at Foxwood and his money?" resumed Mrs. Andinnian, in a tone that she well knew how to make contemptuously bitter. The words stung Karl. His answer was full of pain: the pain of despair. "I wish life had never been for him, mother. Or for me, either. If I could restore Adam to what he has forfeited by giving my own life, I would do it willingly. I have not much left to live for." The tone struck Mrs. Andinnian. She thought that even the reflected disgrace, the stain on his name, scarcely justified it. Karl said a few words to her then of the blight that had fallen on his own life--the severance from Lucy Cleeve. She told him she was sorry: but it was quite evident that she was too much preoccupied with other things to care about it. And the sad evening passed on.