There must be action of some sort or other, instant and unerring.
"It don't matter," he thought, with the old idle indifference, oddly becoming in that extreme moment the very height of stoic philosophy, without any thought or effort to be such; "I was going to the bad of my own accord; I must have cut and run for the debts, if not for this; it would have been the same thing, anyway, so it's just as well to do it for them.

Life's over, and I'm a fool that I don't shoot myself." But there was too imperious a spirit in the Royallieu blood to let him give in to disaster and do this.

He rose slowly, staggering a little, and feeling blinded and dazzled with the blaze of the morning sun as he went out of the beech wood.

There were the marks of the hoofs on the damp, dewy turf; his lips trembled a little as he saw them--he would never rid the horse again! Some two miles, more or less, lay between him and the railway.

He was not certain of his way, and he felt a sickening exhaustion on him; he had been without food since his breakfast before the race.