ill alive?" said the host.

Without replying, Grimaud opened the man's doublet to feel if his
heart beat, and at the same time the innkeeper approached the bed.
Suddenly both started back with an exclamation of horror. A poniard
was buried to the hilt in the left breast of the headsman.

What had passed between the priest and his penitent was as follows.

It has been seen that the monk showed himself little disposed to delay
his journey in order to receive the confession of the wounded man; so
little, indeed, that he would probably have endeavoured to avoid it by
flight, had not the menaces of the Count de Guiche, and afterwards the
presence of the servants, or perhaps his own reflections, induced him
to perform to the end the duties of his sacred office.

On finding himself alone with the sufferer, he approached the pillow
of the latter. The headsman examined him with one of those rapid,
anxious looks peculiar to dying men, and made a movement of surprise.

"You are very young, holy father," said he.

"Those who wear my dress have no age," replied the monk severely.

"Alas, good father, speak to me more kindly! I need a friend in these
my last moments."

"Do you suffer much?" asked the monk.

"Yes, but in soul rather than in body."

"We will save your soul," said the young man; "but, tell me, are you
really the executioner of Bethune, as these people say?"

"I was," replied the wounded man hurriedly, as though fearful that the
acknowledgment of his degrading profession might deprive him of the
assistance of which he stood in such imminent need. "I was, but I am
so no longer; I gave up my office many years ago. I am still obliged
to appear at executions, but I no longer officiate. Heaven forbid that
I should!"

"You have a horror of your profession, then?"

The headsman groaned.

"So long as I only struck in the name of the law and of justice," said
he, "my conscience was at rest, and my sleep untroubled; but since
that terrible night when I served as instrument of a private
vengeance, and raised my sword with hatred against one of God's
creatures--since that night"----

The headsman paused, and shook his head despairingly.

"Speak on," said the monk, who had seated himself on the edge of the
bed, and began to take an interest in a confession that commenced so
strangely.

"Ah!" exclaimed the dying man, "what efforts have I not made to stifle
my remorse by twenty years of good works! I have exposed m