He stared at me quite expressionless and swayed where he stood. He was stupid and sodden with drink, it was evident. “Let’s go home,” he said. “I’m heavy for sleep as a hedgehog in the sun.” I set my lips and pushed him onward. It was hopeless entirely to think of questioning him as to the reason of his sudden reappearance, and under such circumstances, in his present state. The most I could do was to get him within the mill as quietly as possible and settle him somewhere to sleep off his debauch. In this I was successful beyond my expectations, and not even my father, who lay resting in his room--as he often did now in the hot afternoons--knew of his return till late in the evening. In the fresh gloom of the evening he stirred and woke. His brain was still clouded, but he was in, I supposed, such right senses as he ever enjoyed now. At the sound of his moving I came and stood over him. He stared at me for a long time in silence, as he lay. “Do you know where you are?” I said at last. “Renny--by the saints!” He spoke in a dry, parched whisper. “It’s the mill, isn’t it?” “Yes; it’s the mill. I brought you here filthy with drink, after you’d tried to throw yourself under a train and thought better of it.” He struggled wildly into a sitting posture and his eyelids blinked with horror. “I thought of it all the way in the train--coming up--from London,” he said in a shrill undervoice. “When I got out at the station I had some more--the last straw, I suppose--for I wandered, and found myself above the place--and the devil drove me down to do it.” “Well, you repented, it seems.” “I couldn’t--when I heard it. And the very wind of it seemed to tear at me as it passed.” “What brings you to London? I thought you were still abroad.” “What drove me? What always drives me? That cruel, persecuting demon!” “He found you out over there, then?” “I can’t hide from him. I’ve never had a week of rest and peace after that first year. It was all right then. I threw upon the green cloth the miserable surplus of the stuff you lent me and won. For six months we lived like fighting cocks. We dressed the young ’un in the color that brought us luck. My soul, she’s a promising chick, Renny. You’re her uncle, you know; you can’t go back from that.” “Where did he come across you?” “In a kursaal at Homburg. We were down in the mouth then. Six weeks of lentils and sour bread. I saw him looking at me across the petits chevaux table--curse his brute’s face! We never got rid of him after that. Give me some drink. My heart’s dancing like a pea on a drum.” “There’s water on the wash-hand stand.” “Don’t talk like that. There’s a fire here no water can reach.” “I see there is. You’ve added another strand to the rope that’s dragging you down.” He fell back on the bed, writhing and moaning. “What’s the good of moralizing with a poor fool condemned to perdition? It’s my only means of escaping out of hell for a moment. Sometimes, with that in me, I’m a man again.”