His mood saddened before the train stopped at Blacksod.

“If I knew I were only going to live five more years,” he thought, “I would give away four of them if I were allowed to spend the other one, day and night, with Christie!” And then, as the cold wind made him shiver a little and turn up his coat-collar, “I wonder,” he thought, “whether I’m just weak and cowardly in not leaving them all and carrying Christie off to London, let happen what may?”

The train was now following an umbrageous embankment parallel with the river Lunt. The muddy smell of that sluggish water, which the Ramsgard boys irreverently named “the Bog-stream,” assailed his nostrils, bringing with it a feeling of obscure misery. A chilliness in his bones, a weariness in his brain, gave now to all the events of the day a sombre colour, like the colour of river-mud.