"Stop!" cried the old man. "Stop, Gabriel; I implore, I command you not to leave me!"
"The priest, grandfather--your confession--"
"It must be made to you. In this darkness and this hurricane no man can keep the path across the heath. Gabriel, I am dying--I should be dead before you got back. Gabriel, for the love of the Blessed Virgin, stop here with me till I die--my time is short--I have a terrible secret that I must tell to somebody before I draw my last breath! Your ear to my mouth--quick! quick!"
As he spoke the last words, a slight noise was audible on the other side of the partition, the door half opened, and Perrine appeared at it, looking affrightedly into the room. The vigilant eyes of the old man--suspicious even in death--caught sight of her directly.
"Go back!" he exclaimed faintly, before she could utter a word; "go back--push her back, Gabriel, and nail down the latch in the door, if she won't shut it of herself!"
"Dear Perrine! go in again," implored Gabriel. "Go in, and keep the children from disturbing us. You will only make him worse--you can be of no use here!"
She obeyed without speaking, and shut the door again.
While the old man clutched him by the arm, and repeated, "Quick! quick! your ear close to my mouth," Gabriel heard her say to the children (who were both awake), "Let us pray for grandfather." And as he knelt down by the bedside, there stole on his ear the sweet, childish tones of his little sisters, and the soft, subdued voice of the young girl who was teaching them the prayer, mingling divinely with the solemn wailing of wind and sea, rising in a still and awful purity over the hoarse, gasping whispers of the dying man.
"I took an oath not to tell it, Gabriel--lean down closer! I'm weak, and they mustn't hear a word in that room--I took an oath not to tell it; but death is a warrant to all men for breaking such an oath as that. Listen; don't lose a word I'm saying! Don't look away into the room: the stain of blood-guilt has defiled it forever! Hush! hush! hush! Let me speak. Now your father's dead, I can't carry the horrid secret with me into the grave. Just remember, Gabriel--try if you can't remember the time before I was bedridden, ten years ago and more--it was about six weeks, you know, before your mother's death; you can remember it by that. You and all the children were in that room with your mother; you were asleep, I think; it was night, not very late--only nine o'clock. Your father and I were standing at the door, looking out at the heath in the moonlight. He was so poor at that time, he had been obliged to sell his own boat, and none of the neighbors would take him out fishing with them--your father wasn't liked by any of the neighbors. Well; we saw a stranger coming toward us; a very young man, with a knapsack on his back. He looked like a gentleman, though he was but poorly dressed. He came up, and told us he was dead tired, and didn't think he could reach the town that night and asked if we would give him shelter till morning. And your father said yes, if he would make no noise, because the wife was ill, and the children were asleep. So he said all he wanted was to go to sleep himself before the fire. We had nothing to give him but black bread. He had better food with him than that, and undid his knapsack to get at it, and--and--Gabriel! I'm sinking--drink! something to drink--I'm parched with thirst."
Silent and deadly pale, Gabriel poured some of the cider from the pitcher on the table into a drinking-cup, and gave it to the old man. Slight as the stimulant was, its effect on him was almost instantaneous. His dull eyes brightened a little, and he went on in the same whispering tones as before:
"He pulled the food out of his knapsack rather in a hurry, so that some of the other small things in it fell on the floor. Among these was a pocketbook, which your father picked up and gave him back; and he put it in his coat-pocket--there was a tear in one of the sides of the book, and through the hole some bank-notes bulged out. I saw them, and so did your father (don't move away, Gabriel; keep close, there's nothing in me to shrink from). Well, he shared his food, like an honest fellow, with us; and then put his hand in his pocket, and gave me four or five livres, and then lay down before the fire to go to sleep. As he shut his eyes, your father looked at me in a way I didn't like. He'd been behaving very bitterly and desperately toward us for some time past, being soured about poverty, and your mother's illness, and the constant crying out of you children for more to eat. So when he told me to go and buy some wood, some bread, and some wine with money I had got, I didn't like, somehow, to leave him alone with the stranger; and so made excuses, saying (which was true) that it was too late to buy things in the village that night. But he told me in a rage to go and do as he bid me, and knock the people up if the shop was shut. So I went out, being dreadfully afraid of your father--as indeed we all were at that time--but I couldn't make up my mind to go far from the house; I was afraid of something happening, though I didn't dare to think what. I don't know how it was, but I stole back in about ten minutes on tiptoe to the cottage; I looked in at the window, and saw--O God! forgive him! O God! forgive me!--I saw--I--more to drink, Gabriel! I can't speak again--more to drink!"
The voices in the next room had ceased; but in the minute of silence which now ensued, Gabriel heard his sisters kissing Perrine, and wishing her good-night. They were all three trying to go asleep again.
"Gabriel, pray yourself, and teach your children after you to pray, that your father may find forgiveness where he is now gone. I saw him as plainly as I now see you, kneeling with his knife in one hand over the sleeping man. He was taking the little book with the notes in it out of the stranger's pocket. He got the book into his possession, and held it quite still in his hand for an instant, thinking. I believe--oh no! no! I'm sure--he was repenting; I'm sure he was going to put the book back; but just at that moment the stranger moved, and raised one of his arms, as if he was waking up. Then the temptation of the devil grew too strong for your father--I saw him lift the hand with the knife in it--but saw nothing more. I couldn't look in at the window--I couldn't move away--I couldn't cry out; I stood with my back turned toward the house, shivering all over, though it was a warm summer-time, and hearing no cries, no noises at all, from the room behind me. I was too frightened to know how long it was before the opening of the cottage door made me turn round; but when I did, I saw your father standing before me in the yellow moonlight, carrying in his arms the bleeding body of the poor lad who had shared his food with us and slept on our hearth. Hush! hush! Don't groan and sob in that way! Stifle it with the bedclothes. Hush! you'll wake them in the next room!"
"Gabriel--Gabriel!" exclaimed a voice from behind the partition. "What has happened? Gabriel! let me come out and be with you!"
"No! no!" cried the old man, collecting the last remains of his strength in the attempt to speak above the wind, which was just then howling at the loudest; "stay where you are--don't speak, don't come out--I command you! Gabriel" (his voice dropped to a faint whisper), "raise me up in bed--you must hear the whole of it now; raise me; I'm choking so that I can hardly speak. Keep close and listen--I can't say much more. Where was I?--Ah, your father! He threatened to kill me if I didn't swear to keep it secret; and in terror of my life I swore. He made me help him to carry the body--we took it all across the heath--oh! horrible, horrible, under the bright moon--(lift me higher, Gabriel). You know the great stones yonder, set up by the heathens; you know the hollow place under the stones they call 'The Merchant's Table'; we had plenty of room to lay him in that, and hide him so; and then we ran back to the cottage. I never dared to go near the place afterward; no, nor your father either! (Higher, Gabriel! I'm choking again.) We burned the pocket-book and the knapsack--never knew his name--we kept the money to spend. (You're not lifting me; you're not listening close enough!) Your father said it was a legacy, when you and your mother asked about the money. (You hurt me, you shake me to pieces, Gabriel, when you sob like that.) It brought a curse on us, the money; the curse has drowned your father and your brother; the curse is killing me; but I've confessed--tell the priest I confessed before I died. Stop her; stop Perrine! I hear her getting up. Take his bones away from the Merchant's Table, and bury them for the love of God! and tell the priest (lift me higher, lift me till I am on my knees)--if your father was alive, he'd murder me; but tell the priest--because of my guilty soul--to pray, and--remember