But he could not have gone very far.
What stopped him was the thought of the boy, Laughing Anne's child, that (Davidson remembered her very words) would not have a dog's chance.
"This life the woman had left behind her appeared to Davidson's conscience in the light of a sacred trust.

He assumed an erect attitude and, quaking inwardly still, turned about and walked towards the house.
"For all his tremors he was very determined; but that smashed skull had affected his imagination, and he felt very defenceless in the darkness, in which he seemed to hear faintly now here, now there, the prowling footsteps of the murderer without hands.

But he never faltered in his purpose.

He got away with the boy safely after all.

The house he found empty.