had removed from the
County; logical substitutes had to be evolved. The mere comparison of the
various entries, the tracing of the tracts to the amounts involved, was
scarcely within Gordon's ability.

He labored through the swiftly-falling dusk into the night, and took up
the task early the following morning. A large part of the work had to be
done a second, third, time--his brain, unaccustomed to concentrated mental
processes, soon grew weary; he repeated aloud a fact of figures without
the least comprehension of the sounds formed by his lips, and he would say
them again and again, until he had forced into his blurring mind some
significance, some connection.

He would fall asleep over his table, his scattered papers, in the grey
daylight, or in the radiance of a large glass lamp, and stay immobile for
hours, while his dog lay at his feet, or, uneasy, nosed his sharp, relaxed
knees.

No one would seek him, enter his house, break his exhausted slumbers.
Lying on an outflung arm his head with its sunken, closed eyes, loose
lips, seemed hardly more alive than the photographed clay of Mrs.
Hollidew in the sitting room. He would wake slowly, confused; the dog
would lick his inert hand, and they would go together in search of food to
the kitchen.

On the occasions when he was forced to go to the post-office, the store,
he went hurriedly, secretively, in a coat as green, as aged, as Pompey's
own.

He was anxious to finish his labor, to be released from its
responsibility, its weight. It appeared tremendously difficult to
consummate; it had developed far beyond his expectation, his original
conception. The thought pursued him that some needy individual would be
overlooked, his claim neglected. No one must be defrauded; all, all, must
have their own, must have their chance. He, Gordon Makimmon, was seeing
that they had, with Lettice's money ... because ... because....

The leaves had been swept from the trees; the mountains were gaunt, rocky,
against swift, low clouds. There was no sunlight except for a brief,
sullen red fire in the west at the end of day. At night the winds blew
bleakly down Greenstream valley. Shutters were locked, shades drawn, in
the village; night obliterated it absolutely. No one passed, after dark,
on the road above.

He seemed to be toiling alone at a hopeless, interminable task isolated in
the midst of a vast, uninhabited desolation, in a black chasm filled with
the sound of whirling leaves a