s Church to absolve
all sinners who truly repent and believe in Him, of His great mercy
forgive thee thine offences, and by His authority committed to me
I absolve thee from all thy sins in the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."

Beaver was holding the lantern close to the penitent's face;
Cragstone, kneeling beside him, saw that the end had come already,
and, after making the sign of the Cross on the dead Indian's
forehead, the young priest arose and went silently out into the
night.

* * * * *

The sun was slipping down into the far horizon, fretted by the
inimitable wonder of islands that throng the Georgian Bay; the
blood-colored skies, the purpling clouds, the extravagant beauty
of a Northern sunset hung in the west like the trailing robes of
royalty, soundless in their flaring, their fading; soundless as the
unbroken wilds which lay bathed in the loneliness of a dying day.

But on the color-flooded shore stood two, blind to the purple, the
scarlet, the gold, blind to all else save the tense straining of
the other's eyes; deaf to nature's unsung anthem, hearing only the
other's voice. Cragstone stood transfixed with consternation. The
memory of the past week of unutterable joy lay blasted with the
awfulness of this moment, the memory of even that first day--when
he had stood with his arms about her, had told her how he had
declared her reclaimed name far and wide, how even Penetanguishene
knew now that she had suffered blamelessly, how his own heart
throbbed suffocatingly with the honor, the delight of being the
poor means through which she had been righted in the accusing eyes
of their little world, and that now she would be his wife, his
sweet, helping wife, and she had been great enough not to remind
him that he had not asked her to be his wife until her name was
proved blameless, and he was great enough not to make excuse of the
resolve he had set out upon just when August Beaver came to turn
the current of his life.

But he had other eyes to face to-night, eyes that blurred the past,
that burned themselves into his being--the condemning, justly and
righteously indignant eyes of his Bishop--while his numb heart,
rather than his ears, listened to the words that fell from the
prelate's lips like curses on his soul, like the door that would
shut him forever outside the holy place.

"What have you done, you pretended servant of the living God?