The gate was
fastened only by a latch, and offered no resistance to the intruder. He
crept with stealthy footsteps along the smooth gravel walk, sheltered by
dark laurels, on which the light flashed cheerily from those bright
windows. Sounds of laughter and of music pealed out upon the wintry air.
Shadows flitted across the blinds of the broad bay windows. Philip
Sheldon crept into a sheltered nook beside the rustic porch, and sank
down exhausted in the shadow of the laurels.
He sat there in a kind of stupor. He had lost the power of thought,
somehow, on that dreary journey. It seemed almost as if he had left some
portion of his being out yonder in the cold and darkness. He had
difficulty in remembering why he had come to this place, and what that
deed was which he meant to do.
"Hawkehurst," he muttered to himself--"Hawkehurst, the man who leagued
against me with Jedd! I swore to be even with him if ever I found the
opportunity--if ever! And George refused me a few shillings; my brother,
my only brother, refused to stand my friend!"
Hawkehurst and George--big only brother--the images of these two men
floated confusedly in his brain: he could scarcely separate them.
Sometimes it seemed to him that he was still sitting outside his
brother's door, on the staircase in Gray's Inn, hugging himself in his
rags, and cursing his unnatural kinsman's cruelty; then in the next
moment he remembered where he was, and breathed bitter curses upon that
unconscious enemy whose laugh pealed out every now and then amid a chorus
of light-hearted laughter.
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