BOOK THE FIRST: THE CUP AND THE LIP
Chapter 12: The Sweat of an Honest Man's Brow (continued)
'It ain't what I implicate, it's what Gaffer implicated,' was the
dogged and determined answer. 'I don't pretend to know more
than that his words to me was, "I done it." Those was his words.'
'I must see this out, Mortimer,' whispered Eugene, rising. 'How
shall we go?'
'Let us walk,' whispered Lightwood, 'and give this fellow time to
think of it.'
Having exchanged the question and answer, they prepared
themselves for going out, and Mr Riderhood rose. While
extinguishing the candles, Lightwood, quite as a matter of course
took up the glass from which that honest gentleman had drunk,
and coolly tossed it under the grate, where it fell shivering into
fragments.
'Now, if you will take the lead,' said Lightwood, 'Mr Wrayburn and
I will follow. You know where to go, I suppose?'
'I suppose I do, Lawyer Lightwood.'
'Take the lead, then.'
The waterside character pulled his drowned cap over his ears with
both hands, and making himself more round-shouldered than
nature had made him, by the sullen and persistent slouch with
which he went, went down the stairs, round by the Temple
Church, across the Temple into Whitefriars, and so on by the
waterside streets.
'Look at his hang-dog air,' said Lightwood, following.
'It strikes me rather as a hang-MAN air,' returned Eugene. 'He has
undeniable intentions that way.'
They said little else as they followed. He went on before them as
an ugly Fate might have done, and they kept him in view, and
would have been glad enough to lose sight of him. But on he went
before them, always at the same distance, and the same rate.
Aslant against the hard implacable weather and the rough wind, he
was no more to be driven back than hurried forward, but held on
like an advancing Destiny. There came, when they were about
midway on their journey, a heavy rush of hail, which in a few
minutes pelted the streets clear, and whitened them. It made no
difference to him. A man's life being to be taken and the price of it
got, the hailstones to arrest the purpose must lie larger and deeper
than those. He crnshed through them, leaving marks in the fast-
melting slush that were mere shapeless holes; one might have
fancied, following, that the very fashion of humanity had departed
from his feet.
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