It had grown much lighter, but not yet with the rosy flush of sunrise;
only the stars had faded out, and the deep blue of the night given way to
a misty grey. The light was strong enough to let all things be seen, but
not to call the due tints back to them. So I could see cliffs and ground,
bushes and stones and sea, and all were of one pearly grey colour, or
rather they were colourless; but the most colourless and greyest thing of
all was Maskew's face. His hair had got awry, and his head showed much
balder than when it was well trimmed; his face, too, was drawn with heavy
lines, and there were rings under his eyes. Beside all that, he had got
an ugly fall in trying to escape, and one cheek was muddied, and down it
trickled a blood-drop where a stone had cut him. He was a sorry sight
enough, and looking at him, I remembered that day in the schoolroom when
this very man had struck the parson, and how our master had sat patient
under it, with a blood-drop trickling down his cheek too. Maskew kept his
eyes fixed for a long time on the ground, but raised them at last, and
looked at me with a vacant yet pity-seeking look. Now, till that moment I
had never seen a trace of Grace in his features, nor of him in hers; and
yet as he gazed at me then, there was something of her present in his
face, even battered as it was, so that it seemed as if she looked at me
behind his eyes.
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