e situation,
for I believe Sabina was half in a mind to take our advice until that
meeting. Then she changed. Apparently she misunderstood him."

"Ray was very troubled. Somehow he made Sabina angry--the last thing he
meant to do. He's sorry now that he spoke. She thought he was
considering himself, and he really was thinking for Abel."

"We must go on being patient. Next year I shall urge her to let Abel be
sent to a boarding-school. That will be a great advantage every way."

So they talked and meantime Abel's sorrow ran into the channels of
evil. It may be that the presence of Estelle had determined this
misfortune; but he was ripe for it and his feeling prompted him to let
his misery run over, that others might drink of the cup. He had long
contemplated a definite deed and planned a stroke against Raymond
Ironsyde; but he had postponed the act, partly from fear, partly because
the thought of it was a pleasure. Inverted instincts and a mind fouled
by promptings from without, led him to understand that Ironsyde was his
mother's enemy and therefore his own. Baggs had told him so in a
malignant moment and Abel believed it. To injure his enemy was to honour
his mother. And the time had come to do so. He was ripe for it to-night.
He told himself that Peter Grim would have approved the blow, and with
his mind a chaos of mistaken opinions, at once ludicrous and mournful,
he set himself to his task. He ate his supper as usual and went to bed;
but when the house was silent in sleep, he rose, put on his clothes and
hastened out of doors. He departed by a window on the ground floor and
slipped into a night of light and shade, for the moon was full and rode
through flying clouds.

The boy felt a youthful malefactor's desire to get his task done as
swiftly as possible. He was impatient to feel the deed behind him. He
ran through the deserted village, crossed a little bridge over the
river, and then approached the Mill by a meadow below them. Thus he
always came to see Mr. Baggs, or anybody who was friendly.

The roof of the works shone in answer to fitful moonlight, and they
presented to his imagination a strange and unfamiliar appearance. Under
the sleight of the hour they were changed and towered majestically above
him. The Mill slept and in the creepy stillness, the river's voice,
which he had hardly heard till now, was magnified to a considerable
murmur. From far away down the valley came the song of the sea, where a
bri