from India."

"Then there need be no delay about the interment," remarked the mayor,
"if he had no family in England, and was just come from India. Bah! we
could not keep him till any friends came from India. It is enough. We
must make an inquiry; but the corpse cannot be kept above ground. The
interment may take place as soon as you please, Monsieur."

"I suppose you will wish for some trifle as payment?" said the landlord,
addressing Roland.

"No," he answered, "I only watched by him through the night; and I am
but a passing traveller like himself."

"You will assist at the funeral?" he asked.

"If it can be to-morrow," replied Roland; "if not I must go on to
Lucerne. But I shall come back to Engelberg. If it be necessary for me
to stay, and the commune will pay my expenses, I will stay."

"Not necessary at all," said the mayor; "the accident is too simple, and
he has no friends. Why should the commune lose by him?"

"There are the fifty pounds," suggested Roland.

"And there are the expenses!" said the mayor. "No, no. It is not
necessary for you to stay; not at all. If you are coming back again to
Engelberg it will be all right. You say you are coming back?"

"I am sure to come back to Engelberg," he answered, with gloomy
emphasis.

For already Roland began to feel that he, himself, was dead, and a new
life, utterly different from the old, was beginning for him. And this
new life, beginning here, would often draw him back to its birth-place.
There would be an attraction for him here, even in the humble grave
where men thought they had buried Roland Sefton. It would be the only
link with his former life, and it would draw him to it irresistibly.

"And what is your name and employment, my good fellow?" asked the mayor.

"Jean Merle," he answered promptly. "I am a wood-carver."

The deed he had only thought of an hour ago was accomplished, and there
could be no undoing it. This passport and these papers would be
forwarded to the embassy at Berne, where doubtless his name was already
known as a fugitive criminal. He could not reclaim them, for with them
he took up again the burden of his sin. He had condemned himself to a
penalty and sacrifice the most complete that man could think of, or put
into execution. Roland Sefton was dead, and his wife and children were
set free from the degradation he had brought upon them.

He spent the remaining hours of the day in wandering about the forests
in the Alpine va