Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/217

 can to finish me, but I'm back again. You don't get rid of me so easily as that, you know. You can come and look, if you like. Here I am, company for you after all."

There was a little breeze blowing now in his eyes and this cheered him. If only the wind rose the fog would move and all might yet be well. His clothes were torn, his hands bleeding, his hat gone. He crawled into a sitting position, shook his fist in the air, and cried:

"You old devil, you're there, are you! It's your game all this. You're seeing whether you can finish me. But I'll be even with you yet." And it did indeed seem to him that he could see through the mist that red head sticking out like a furze bush on fire. The hair, the damp pale face, the melancholy eyes, and then the voice:

"It's only a theory, of course, Mr. Harkness. My father, who was a most remarkable man...."

The thought of Crispin enraged him, and the rage drove him on to his feet. He was standing up and moving forward quite briskly. He moved like a blind man, his hands before him as though he were expecting at every moment to strike some hard, sharp substance, but whereas before the fog had seemed to envelope him, strangling him, penetrating into his very heart and vitals, now it retreated from before him like a moving wall. The incline was now less sharp, and now less sharp again. Little