"Stripp'd as I am of all the golden fruit
Of self-esteem; and by the cutting blasts
Of self-reproach familiarly assail'd."

Ringfield bared his head as the priest approached, standing with lowered eyes and heaving breast. Father Rielle stopped short in wonder as he noted the pale drawn face, the working hands, the averted eyes and trembling lips.

"Can I do anything for you?" he cried in his excellent English.
"Monsieur is not well perhaps? This peculiar day, this air——"

"You are right. I am not well. I have been very ill, but that was nothing, only illness of the body. Yes, there is one thing you can do for me. Oh! man of God! What does it matter that I do not belong to your communion? It must not matter, it shall not matter. Father Rielle, I need your help very much, very, very much."

In still profounder astonishment the priest took a step forward.

"You are in trouble, trouble of the soul, some perplexity of the mind?
Tell me then how I can help?"

And Ringfield answered:—

"Father Rielle, I wish to confess to you. I wish you to hear a confession."

"Oh! Monsieur, think! We are not of the same communion. You have said so yourself. You would perhaps ridicule my holy office, my beloved Church!"

"No, no! I am too much in earnest."

"You wish me to hear a confession, you, a minister of another religious body not in sympathy with us, not a son of the only true Church? I do not care to receive this confession, Monsieur."

Ringfield's hand pressed heavily on the priest's arm and his agonized face came very close. Father Rielle's curiosity naturally ran high.

"Monsieur," he said nevertheless coldly, not choosing to display this desire to know too suddenly, as there darted into his mind the image of Miss Clairville, "it is true you have no right to demand absolution from me, a priest of the Holy Catholic Church, it is true I have no right to hear this confession and give or withhold absolution. Yet, monsieur, setting dogma and ritual aside, we both believe in the same Heavenly Father, in the same grand eternal hope. I will hear this confession, my brother, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, Amen. And may it bring peace to your soul."

There was a silence, and then Ringfield led the way to the little church. Father Rielle, who had never been inside the finished edifice before, although he had frequently walked through it while the builders were at work, entered respectfully and crossed himself in the porch.

"Ah!" he whispered or rather breathed in French as if disinclined to speak louder, "if you were but as I am, my brother, if you were but one of the true flock shepherded by the only Shepherd! Perhaps this is but the beginning. Perhaps you desire to cast away your inadequate faith and come to us, be one with us. My brother, I pray that this may be so. With us alone you shall have comfort to your soul and sweet solace in affliction, peace of mind, honesty of conviction, and after many a struggle, purity of life."

As he ceased, Ringfield, by some extraordinary instinct which mastered him, at once fell upon his knees at the side of Father Rielle, who had taken a seat not far from the door, where he might command a view of the bridge in case of interruption, and with that dangerous hole in the footway in his memory.

"If I say 'Holy Father,' will that be right?"

"Quite right, my son. Have no fear. Say on."

Ringfield bowed his head on his hands and began:—

"Holy Father——"

The priest waited quietly. His thin sensitive visage was transfigured and his whole being uplifted and dignified as he thus became the Mediator between Man and God.

"Holy Father, I know no form of word——"

"That does not matter. Whether you cry 'Peccavi' or 'Father, I have sinned,' it is all the same."

"Holy Father, I have sinned, sinned grievously before God and Heaven, before men and angels, but most of all have I sinned before my own ideals and conceptions of what I meant to be—a Christian clergyman. Hear my confession, Holy Father; with you to love, love a woman, would be sin; it was not sin for me, and yet in loving a woman it became sin also with me, for it blotted out God and humanity. I not only loved—I also hated; I lived to hate. I hated while I was awake and while I slept, in walking, in eating, in drinking, so that my life became a burden to me and I forsook the throne of God in prayer."

The priest, in the moment's pause which had followed these words of self-abasement, had seen something across the river that claimed his attention, nevertheless he gravely encouraged the penitent.

"Keep nothing back, my son. Let me hear all."

What he had seen was a man running up and down in front of Poussette's, in some agitation as he fancied, presently to be joined by two or three others.

"Thus I lived, hating. I left this place, hating, and I followed him, you know whom I mean, hating. I met him there or rather I sought him out and helped him to fall, watched him drink strong liquor and did not intervene, did not stay his hand. I made him drunk—I left him drunk—I left him drunk. I went away and lied. I said he was ill and I locked the door and took the key. I went back again and saw him; he was still drunk and I was glad, because I thought 'This will keep him here, this will make her hate and avoid him, this will prevent the marriage'."

Father Rielle, though listening intently, still kept his gaze riveted on the peculiar actions of the men outside Poussette's. The running to and fro continued, but now suddenly an impulse prompted them to go in one direction; they pointed, gesticulated, and then with startling rapidity disappeared around the corner of the bridge. By this time the priest was convinced that something was transpiring of serious and uncommon import, yet he gave precedence to the wants of the penitent, kneeling with head on his hands.

"I vowed he should never marry her—you know of whom I am speaking, of both?"

"I know, my son."

"I say—I followed him. I took a room—I will tell you where, later—which enabled me to watch him should he go out. Then I fell ill myself and had to be kept in bed. O the torture, the pain, of knowing that I might miss him, that he might leave without my knowledge, I, from weakness, being unable to overtake him! And that happened, that came to pass, as I feared it would."

"You watched him go?"

"No. When I recovered sufficiently to walk, I went to find him. I went to that place where I had helped to make him drunk, but he was gone."

"What day was that?"

"I do not know. I have lost track of the days, lost track of the time."

Father Rielle was now more than professionally interested; he saw that the man before him was in a terrible state of incipient mental collapse.

"Surely you can tell me what day this is?" he cried.

"I cannot."

"Nor yesterday?"

"No."

"Yesterday was Sunday."

"Sunday? The word has no meaning."

"But at least you know where you are, where we both are at this instant."

"Yes, I know that. We are in the church built by M. Poussette."

"Yesterday was Sunday and there should have been a service here, but you were absent. How long have you been here? Were you waiting for me?"

"No."

"For him?"

"Yes."

"And he came? Over the bridge?"

In a flash the priest divined, as he thought, the fate of Crabbe.

"Mon Dieu! M'tenant je comprends! The hole I passed and all-but stumbled through! You cut that, you waited to see him fall through and drown! Perhaps he has ceased to struggle! Ah! that is why the crowd is gathering at Poussette's!"

Father Rielle rose to his feet and thrust aside the appealing hands of the other, but the strength exerted in this supreme moment was terrific and the priest could not escape.

"No, no," sobbed Ringfield, dry-eyed and trembling. "I know what you think—that I pushed him over, that I pushed him down, but I did not. I wished to kill him, I wished to put him out of the way, but I had not the courage. He crossed in safety, the hole was not my doing. He stood there on the rock and he lied to me about her, about Miss Clairville, and I struck him and he stumbled and fell."

"You pushed him, God forgive you, I know you pushed! You have killed him and now you are keeping me here. Let me go, let me go!"

"I did not push, I swear it! Only in my mind, only in my thoughts, did I kill him. I struck him and he fell. But it is true that I am guilty in thought, if not in deed, and I will take my punishment."

"What do you mean? What are you saying? One moment you are innocent of this man's death; the next you are saying you are guilty."

Ringfield at last removed his heavy clasp from the priest's arm and stood quietly waiting, it seemed, as if for condemnation or sentence.

"Before God, it was not my hand that sent him to his death, still, having come to my senses, I desire to suffer for my fault, and I will give myself up to take what punishment I deserve. I have disgraced my calling and my Church. I can never preach again, never live the life of a Christian minister again. Some shelter I must seek, some silence, some reparation I must make——"

He bent his eyes on the ground, his whole mien expressed the contrition of the sinner, but Father Rielle thought more of the affair from the standpoint of crime than from that of sin.

"What do you mean by punishment?" he said, torn between curiosity to know what had really become of the guide and a wish to hear everything Ringfield had to say. While the priest was thus hesitating to move along the road to the point where by making a slight detour among some pines he could cross farther down, a striking but wholly incongruous figure emerged from the trees. With shining top hat, fur-lined coat, gauntlets and cane, M. Lalonde, the Montreal detective, came forward with his professional conceit no whit impaired by juxtaposition with these glacial and solitary surroundings. He handed his card to the priest and bowed to them both.

"Mon Dieu!" muttered Father Rielle, "it is true then! You saw it all! You saw it all—I can see!"

"What there was to see, I certainly saw," returned M. Lalonde, with a careless glance of pity at the forlorn figure of Ringfield. "I not only saw, but I heard. I followed this gentleman from the Hotel Champlain as he followed—our late acquaintance—to this place. Permit me, monsieur, permit me, monsieur le curÉ, to testify if necessary that you are entirely guiltless of the death."

"In act, yes, but not in thought," groaned Ringfield in deepest anguish.

"The law cannot punish for sins of thought; we leave that to the Church. If, monsieur, you had but inquired further into what is known now in provincial annals as the Archambault affair, perhaps you might have been spared some misapprehension and much suffering. Mr. Henry Clairville left a wife."

"A wife!"

"You did not know that? Eh? A wife certainly, as well as a child. A daughter."

"But who——"

"I reciprocate your astonishment. The child's nurse is its mother; she, the empty-headed, the foolish ArtÉmise. She was not of age, it is true, but there—it is done and who cares now, who will interfere or contest? The matter will drop out of sight completely in a few days; meanwhile, monsieur, I return as I came. The morning is fine and I shall enjoy my walk back to the station at Bois Clair. Monsieur le curÉ, you have my card. At any time in your paroisse should you have any more interesting family secrets to divulge, pray do not forget my address. Allons! I will walk with you to the scene of the tragedy, as we shall see it shortly described in the papers. As for you, monsieur, have courage and be tranquil. Rest, monsieur, rest for awhile and leave these scenes of strife and unhappiness as soon as you can. I understand your case; my professional knowledge avails me here, but there are some who might not understand, and so make it hard for you."

The priest looked at Lalonde's card and then at Ringfield.

"Sinner, or worse," he cried, "I cannot, cannot stay. I must go where my duty calls me and see if I can be of use, see whether a man lives or has been shot down to death. Do nothing till I return; at least do nothing desperate. I will seek you as soon as I may. There will be a way out for you yet; I know a haven, a refuge. Only promise me; promise not to give up to remorse and contrition too deeply."

Ringfield stood pale and quiet and gave the promise, but Father Rielle and Lalonde ran along the road leading back from the fall until they reached a point where the river was sufficiently frozen to admit of walking across. Arrived at last among those who had left Poussette's a quarter of an hour before, they were just in time to view the body of the guide where it lay wedged between two large ice-covered boulders. In a few minutes Martin drew it forth; Dr. Renaud was speedily summoned, but life was surely quite extinct, and now the priest and physician met in consultation as to the task of breaking the tragic news to Miss Clairville. In a little while the whole of St. Ignace gathered upon the river-bank to discuss the accident in voluble and graphic French. It was seventeen years since any one had gone over the fall in such a manner and only the oldest present remembered it.

The body of the unfortunate Englishman was taken to Gagnon's establishment and placed in the room recently occupied by Ringfield, who went home with the priest and to whom he seemed to turn in ever-increasing confidence and respect.