sun-up."

"Why didn't you call me?" he said sternly.

"Sho--how I know anybody wan' see yo, hangin' 'roun' de back do'? He
ain' say nuthin', jes' set dar." She continued muttering her crusty
dislike of tramps, as the bishop led his caller through her kitchen and
sent his little daughter to look after her puppy.

He took Frale into his private study, and presently returned and himself
carried him food, placing it before him on a small table where many a
hungry caller had been fed before. Then he occupied himself at his desk
while he quietly observed the boy. He saw that the youth was too worn
and weak to be dealt with rationally at first, and he felt it difficult
to affix the thought of a desperate crime upon one so gentle of mien and
innocent of face; but he knew his people well, and what masterful
passions often slept beneath a mild and harmless exterior.

Nor was it the first time he had been called upon to adjust a conflict
between his own conscience and the law. Often in his office of priest he
had been the recipient of confidences which no human pressure of law
could ever wrest from him. So now he proceeded to draw from Frale his
full and free confession.

Very carefully and lovingly he trespassed in the secret chambers of this
troubled soul, until at last the boy laid bare his heart.

He told of the cause of his anger and his drunken quarrel, of his
evasion of his pursuers and his vow with Cassandra before God, of his
rejection of Doctor Thryng's help and his flight by night, of his
suffering and hunger. All was told without fervor,--a simple passive
narration of events. No one could believe, while listening to him, that
storms of passion and hatred and fear had torn him, or the overwhelming
longing he had suffered at the thought of Cassandra.

But when the bishop touched on the subject of repentance, the hidden
force was revealed. It was as if the tormenting spirit within him had
cried out loudly, instead of the low, monotonous tone in which he
said:--

"Yas, I kin repent now he's dade, but ef he war livin' an' riled me agin
that-a-way like he done--I reckon--I reckon God don't want no repentin'
like I repents."

It was steel against flint, the spark in the narrow blue line of his
eyes as he said the words, and the bishop understood.

But what to do with this man of the mountains--this force of nature in
the wild; how guard him from a far more pernicious element in the
civilized town life than any he