III-XVIII

The stir and heat of Sim's presence died
quickly away; the. house was without a
sound; General Jackson lay like an effigy
in ravelled black and buff wool. Gordon assembled
the scattered papers on the table into an orderly pile.
He moved into the kitchen, abstractedly surveyed
the familiar walls; he walked through the house to
the sitting room, where he stood lost in thought:

The County was "mad clear through"; Sim, supposing
him guilty, had warned him to escape, advised
him to run away... That had never been
a habit of the Makimmons, he would not form it
now, at the end. He was not considering the mere
probability of being shot, but of the greater disaster
that had already smashed the spring of his living.
His sensibilities were deadened to any catastrophe of
the flesh.

At the same time he was conscious of a mounting
rage at being so gigantically misunderstood, and
his anger mingled with a bitter contempt for Simeon
Caley, for a people so blind, so credulous, so helpless
in the grasp of a single, shrewd individual.

He heard subdued voices without, and, through a

[[344]]

p343 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p344w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p345

v?