His mind reverted in a lightning-flash to his father’s skull. Oh, how gentle, oh, how kindly that grin of death seemed, compared with this inhuman glee in the presence of perverse fate! A malign voluptuousness rose up within him, like an intoxicating bubble out of the very abyss, spilling black bile through veins. Ferociously he offered up that poor skull to this radiant sorceress. “You look just as you did, Mother, when you teased Mr. Smith so much, that Horse-Fair day. I hope his ghost won’t be there on Saturday!” His words were innocent enough; but he knew too well what passed, under their cover, between himself and this woman. For good and evil he had made his choice between the living and the dead.

“I could not feel like this,” he thought, “if I were the Wolf Solent I used to be. Goodbye!” he repeated. “I must run.”⁠ ⁠…