This was the date of Horace's fatal visit to Marchmain; and the solemn statement of the dead man relieving him from the actual guilt with which he believed himself accursed, had overpowered him with an emotion beyond words--beyond thought. Enough was left to sting him all his life long with black suggestions of ineffaceable remorse, but so far as act and deed went, he was not guilty. He could say nothing in his unspeakable relief. The desperate tension of his misery had kept him alive and conscious by very consequence of its sufferings--but when the bow was unstrung it yielded instantly. There he lay senseless where his father's feet had used to rest, smitten to the heart with an undeserved and unutterable consolation--guilty, yet not guilty, by some strange interposition of God. He could not even be thankful in this overpowering, unbelievable relief from his misery; he could only fall fainting, unconscious, rapt beyond all sense and feeling. He was deeply, miserably guilty; too deeply stained ever to be clear of that remembrance in this life; but he was not a parricide. In spite of himself he was saved from that horror, and human hope might be possible to him still.
"And so the Cornel's at Marchmain; it's like you're acquaint with all the history of that family, Patchey, my lad--tak up your glass; ould comrades like you and me are no in the way of meeting every day, and you've a long road and a lone across the moor."
So said Sergeant Kennedy, possessed with a virtuous curiosity to learn all that could be learned from "the Cornel's own man," who, with the instinct peculiar to his class, had speedily found out that good ale and company were to be had at the "Tillington Arms," where Mrs. Gilsland showed great respect and honour to the important Patchey. Patchey had already taken glasses enough to increase his dignity and solemn demeanour. He had grown slow and big of speech, and eloquent on the great importance of his own services to the Colonel.
"He's a wise man for other folk," said Patchey deliberately, "but a child, and nothing but a child, where his own affairs is concerned. If it werena for me that ken the world, and keep a strict eye upon the house, he would be ruined, mum; ye may take my word for it--ten times in the year."