" It was his office
to bring comfort, if only he had known how. As a rule the monk came
in, wiping the perspiration from his brow with a coarse blue
handkerchief, and loudly assuring the prisoner how pleasantly cool it
was in his cell. But this time he was nervous and ill at ease. How
did the prisoner look? Emaciated to a skeleton, his teeth prominent
between fleshless lips, his eyes wide open, a wondrous fire burning in
their depths.

"As you will never send for me, my dear Ferleitner, I have come again
unasked to see how you fare. You are not ill?"

"Has the sentence come?" asked the prisoner.

"Not that I know of," answered the monk; "but I see I am disturbing you
at your work."

Conrad had neglected to put away the sheets he had written, and so had
to confess that he had been writing.

"Isn't it too dark to see to write here?"

"You get accustomed to it. At first it was dark, but now it seems to
get lighter and lighter."

"So you've made your will at last?" asked the father, raising his
eyebrows. He meant to be humorous.

"A sort of one!"

"Let's see, then. You have something to leave?"

"I have not. Another has."

The father turned over the sheets, read a line here and there, shook
his shaven head a little, and said "It seems to resemble the New
Testament. Have you been copying it from the Gospel?"

"No, I haven't got a New Testament. That's why I had to write this for
myself."

"This Gospel! You've written one for yourself out of your own head?"

"Not exactly. Well, perhaps now and then I have. I've written what I
could remember. I will be responsible for the errors."

"My curiosity grows," cried the father. "May I read it?"

"It's not worth your trouble, but I knew of nothing else to help me."

"The work has exhausted you, Ferleitner."

"No; on the contrary, I may almost say it has revived me. I'm sorry it
is finished. I thought of nothing else; I forgot everything."

His enthusiasm has consumed him, thought the monk.

"Ferleitner, will you let me take it away with me for a few days?"

Conrad shyly gave permission. The monk gathered the sheets together,
and thrust them carelessly into his pouch, so that the roll stuck out
at the top. When he had gone, Conrad gazed sadly into emptiness and
longed for his manuscript. How happy he had been with it all those
weeks! What would the priest think of it? Everything would be wrong.
Such people see their God with other eyes