Trent, carried
away for a moment by an impulse of pity, felt only disappointment at
the hopelessness of his task. He would have been honestly glad to
have taken the Monty whom he had known back to England, but not this
man! For already that brief flash of awakened life seemed to have
died away. Monty's head was wagging feebly and he was casting
continually little, furtive glances towards the town.
"Please go away," he said. "I don't know you and you give me a
pain in my head. Don't you know what it is to feel a buzz, buzz,
buzzing inside? I can't remember things. It's no use trying."
"Monty, why do you look so often that way?" Trent said quietly.
"Is some one coming out from the town to see you?"
Monty threw a quick glance at him and Trent sighed. For the glance
was full of cunning, the low cunning of the lunatic criminal.
"No one, no one," he said hastily. "Who should come to see me?
I'm only poor Monty. Poor old Monty's got no friends. Go away
and let me dig."
Trent walked a few paces apart, and passed out of the garden to a
low, shelving bank and looked downward where a sea of glass rippled
on to the broad, firm sands. What a picture of desolation! The
grey, hot mist, the whitewashed cabin, the long, ugly potato patch,
the weird, pathetic figure of that old man from whose brain the
light of life had surely passed for ever.
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