'What?' he cried. 'Have you been out alone? How did you
manage?'
But Macfarlane silenced him roughly, bidding him turn to
business. When they had got the body upstairs and laid it on
the table, Macfarlane made at first as if he were going away.
Then he paused and seemed to hesitate; and then, 'You had
better look at the face,' said he, in tones of some
constraint. 'You had better,' he repeated, as Fettes only
stared at him in wonder.
'But where, and how, and when did you come by it?' cried the
other.
'Look at the face,' was the only answer.
Fettes was staggered; strange doubts assailed him. He looked
from the young doctor to the body, and then back again. At
last, with a start, he did as he was bidden. He had almost
expected the sight that met his eyes, and yet the shock was
cruel. To see, fixed in the rigidity of death and naked on
that coarse layer of sackcloth, the man whom he had left well
clad and full of meat and sin upon the threshold of a tavern,
awoke, even in the thoughtless Fettes, some of the terrors of
the conscience. It was a CRAS TIBI which re-echoed in his
soul, that two whom he had known should have come to lie upon
these icy tables. Yet these were only secondary thoughts.
His first concern regarded Wolfe. Unprepared for a challenge
so momentous, he knew not how to look his comrade in the
face. He durst not meet his eye, and he had neither words
nor voice at his command.
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