Then it became painful for him to walk; his fatigue was so
great that his limbs ached at every step. He began to think his life was
drawing near its close. Once or twice he had cried "Madaline" aloud and
the name seemed to die away on the sobbing wind.
He grew exhausted at last; for some hours he had struggled on in the
face of the tempest.
"I shall have to lie down like a dog by the road-side and die," he
thought to himself.
No other fate seemed to be before him but that, and he told himself that
after all he had sold his life cheaply. "Found dead on the Scotch
moors," would be the verdict about him.
What would the world say? What would his golden-haired darling say when
she heard that he was dead?
As the hot tears blinded his eyes--tears for Madaline, not for
himself--a light suddenly flashed into them, and he found himself quite
close to the window of a house. With a deep-drawn, bitter sob, he
whispered to himself that he was saved. He had just strength enough to
knock at the door; and when it was opened he fell across the threshold,
too faint and exhausted to speak, a sudden darkness before his eyes.
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