Amalekite--but never mind!

"I went to the Zoo this morning. There was a lion shut up in a cage all
by himself. Such a solemn, splendid, silent fellow; I could have cried.

"But it is the witching hour of night, my daughter, and you must put
yourself to bed. 'Goot look!'

"Glory."

XVII.

In the middle of the night of Good Friday, John Storm was wakened by
noises in the adjoining cell. There seemed to be the voices of two men in
angry and violent altercation, the one threatening and denouncing, the
other protesting and supplicating.

"The girl is dead--isn't that proof enough?" said one voice. "It's a lie!
It's a false accusation!" said the other voice. "Paul, what are you going
to do?" "Put this bullet in your brain." "But I'm innocent--I take the
Almighty to witness that I'm innocent. Put the pistol down. Help! help!"
"No use calling--there's nobody in the house." "Mercy! mercy! I
haven't much money about me, but you shall have it all. Take
everything--everything--and if there's anything I can do to start you in
life--I'm rich, Paul--I have influence--only spare me!" "Scoundrel, do
you think you can buy me as you bought my sister?" "And if I did I was
not the only one." "Liar! Tell that to herself when you meet her at the
judgment!" "As-sassin!" "Too late--you've met her!"

John Storm listened and understood. The two voices were one voice, which
was the voice of Brother Paul. The lay brother was delirious. His poor
broken brain was rambling in the ways of the past. He was re-enacting the
scene of his crime.

John hesitated. His impulse was to fly into Paul's room and lay hold of
him, that he might prevent him from doing himself any injury. But he
remembered the law of the community, that no member of it should go into
the cell of another under pain of grievous penance. And then there was
the rule of silence and solitude which had not yet been lifted away.

But monks are great sophists, and at the next moment John Storm had told
himself that it was not Brother Paul who was in the adjoining room, but
only his poor perishing body, labouring through the last sloughs of the
twilight land of death. Paul himself, his soul, his spirit, was far away.
Hence it could be no sin to go into the cell of one whose senses were not
there.

His own door was locked, but he scraped back the key and lit his candle,
and stepped into the passage. The voices were still loud in Paul's room,
but no one seemed to hear them. No