ked on open-mouthed with wonder and awe. "It is against
the law," they muttered, but they did not offer active opposition.
Gesualdo, unmolested save for the cries of the old housekeeper, carried
his load into his own house and laid it reverently down on the couch
which stood in the sacristy. He was exhausted with the great strain and
effort; his limbs shook under him, the sweat poured off his face, the
white silk and golden embroideries of his cope and stole were stained
with the clotted blood which had fallen from the wound in the dead man's
breast. He did not heed it, nor did he hear the cries of Candida
mourning the disfigured vestments, nor the loud chattering of the crowd
thrusting itself into the sacristy. He stood looking down on the poor,
dusty, stiffening corpse before him with blind eyes, and thinking, in
silent terror, "Is it her work?"

In his own soul he had no doubt.

Candida plucked once more at his robes.

"The vestments! the vestments! You will ruin them! Take them off----"

He put her from him with a gesture of dignity which she had never seen
in him, and motioned the throng back towards the open door.

"I will watch with him till the guards come," he said. "Go send his wife
hither."

Then he scattered holy water on the dead body, and kneeled down beside
it and prayed.

The crowd thought that he acted strangely. Why was he so still and cold,
and why did he seem so stunned and stricken? If he had screamed and
raved, and run hither and thither purposelessly, and let the corpse lie
where it was in the canes, he would have acted naturally in their
estimation. They hung about the door-ways half afraid, half angered:
some of them went to the mill-house, eager to have the honor of being
the first bearer of such news.

No one was sorry for the dead man, except some few who were in his debt
and knew that now they would be obliged to pay with heavy interest what
they owed up to his successors.

With the grim pathos and dignity which death imparts to the commonest
creature, the murdered man lay on the bench of the sacristy, amidst the
hubbub and the uproar of the crowding people, he and the priest the only
mute creatures in the place.

Gesualdo kneeled by the dead man in his blood-stained, sand-stained
canonicals; he was praying with all the soul there was in him, not for
the dead man, but for the living woman.

The morning broadened into the warmth of day. He rose from his knees,
and bade his sacri