freedom, my duty. To have shirked it any longer would have been
sheer cowardice. So I just kissed her silently, and went up to my
own room--to put on my brown hat, and go out to the banker's.

From that moment forth, one fierce desire in life alone possessed
me. The brooding mystery that enveloped my life ceased to be
passive, and became an active goad, as it were, to push me forward
incessantly on my search for the runaway I was the creature of a
fixed idea. A fiery energy spurred me on all my time. I was
determined now to find out my father's murderer. I was determined to
shake off the atmosphere of doubt and forgetfulness. I was
determined to recall those first scenes of my life that so eluded my
memory.

Yet, strange to say, it was rather a burning curiosity and a deep
sense of duty that urged me on, than anything I could properly call
affection--still less, revenge or malice. I didn't remember my
father as alive at all: the one thing I could recollect about him
was the ghastly look of that dead body, stretched at full length on
the library floor, with its white beard all dabbled in the red blood
that clotted it. It was abstract zeal for the discovery of the truth
that alone pushed me on. This search became to me henceforth an end
and aim in itself. It stood out, as it were, visibly in the
imperative mood: "go here;" "go there;" "do this;" "try that;"
"leave no stone unturned anywhere till you've tracked down the
murderer!" Those were the voices that now incessantly though
inaudibly pursued me.

Next day I spent in preparations for my departure. I would hunt up
Woodbury now, though fifty Aunt Emma's held their gentle old faces