It was thus that each fresh scanning of the prison wall that shut me in this dungeon of dishonor fetched me once and again to this one sally-port of death.  And when it came to this; that I had searched in vain for other outlet, you will not think it strange that I sat down in spirit at this postern to see if I might open it with my own hands.

It was not love of life that made me hesitate.  At two-score years he who has lived at all has lived his best; and if he live beyond the turning point of youthful ardor he must beg the grace of younger men to linger yet a little longer on the stage which once was his and now is theirs.

No, it was not any love of life for life’s own sake that held me back.  ’Twas rather that the Ireton blood is linked up with that thing we call a conscience, a heritage from those simple-hearted ancestors to whom the suicide was a soul accurst—­a soul impenitent, whose very outer husk of flesh and bones they used to bury at the crossing of the ways, with a sharpened stake to pinion it.

’Twas this ancestral conscience made me cowardly; and when the sight of my father’s sword—­Darius had rescued and restored it to its place upon the chimney-breast—­would set me thinking of the Israelitish king, and how, when all was lost, he fell upon his blade and died, this horror of the suicide came to give me pause.

Besides, that way to right the double wrong was not so clear as it might seem.  As matters stood, my living for the present was Margery’s best safeguard.  Till she became my widow and my heir-at-law, the mercenary baronet would play his cards to win her honorably.  I doubted not he’d make hot love to her; but while she stayed a wife, and was not yet a widow, he’d keep his passion decently in bounds, if only for the better compassing of his end.

But from this horn of the dilemma I slipped to fall upon the other.  If my living on as Margery’s husband was her safety for the time, it was an offering of idol-meats upon the altar of my dear lad’s friendship.  What would he think of me?  How could I go about to make it plain that I had robbed him for his own honor’s sake?—­that it was not I but fate that was to blame?

These questions came up answerless, like deep-sea plummets where no bottom is.  I saw the way no farther on than this; that I must go straightway to Jennifer and tell him all.  Beyond that point the darkness was Egyptian, and I could only hope that tricky fate would turn again and blot me out, and make it plain to Richard, and to my dear lady, that love, and not base treachery, had set me on to do as I had done.

In some such dismal grindings of the mill of thought the hours of waiting were outworn at length; and when the sun was dipping to the mountains in the west I rose and washed me in the brook, and afterward constrained myself to eat what Tomas had prepared for me.

The sunset glow was fading in the upper air, and underneath the canopy of leaves the wood was darkening on to twilight, when I made ready to be gone.  Because I thought I might have need of it before the night was done, I buckled on the heirloom sword; and telling Tomas and the other blacks for their own safety to keep an alarm guard waking through the night, I sallied forth upon my errand.