"The last time that I went to shrift, Father Bastian bade me tell him if I knew of a surety that you or my father had any thought to leave Kent. That could not I say, of course, and so much I told him. Then he bade me be diligent and discover the same. `But after what fashion?' said I; for I do ensure you that his meaning came not into mine head afore he spake it in plain language. When at last I did conceive that he would have me to spy upon you, at the first I was struck with horror. You had so learned me, Aunt Grena, that the bare thought of such a thing was hateful unto me. This methinks he perceived, and he set him to reason with me, that the command of holy Church sanctified the act done for her service, which otherwise had been perchance unmeet to be done. Still I yielded not, and then he told me flat, that without I did this thing he would not grant me absolution of my sins. Then, but not till then, I gave way. I hid me behind the arras this morning, looking that you should come to hold discourse in that chamber where, saving for meat, you knew I was not wont to be. I hated the work no whit less than at the first; but the fear of holy Church bound me. I heard you say, Aunt Grena"--Gertrude's voice softened as Grena had rarely heard it--"that you would not leave Father and me--that you could not be happy touching me--that I had no mother save you, and you would not cast me aside to go to an ill end. I saw that Father reckoned it should be to your own hurt if you tarried. And it struck me to the heart that you should be thinking to serve me the while I was planning how to betray you. Yet if Father Bastian refused to shrive me, what should come of me? And all at once, as I stood there hearkening, a word from the Psalter bolted in upon me, a verse that I mind Mother caused me to learn long time agone: `I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and so Thou forgavest the wickedness of my sin.' Then said I to myself, What need I trouble if the priest will not shrive me, when I can go straight unto the Lord and confess to Him? Then came another verse, as if to answer me, that I wist Father Bastian should have brought forth in like case, `Whatsoever sins ye retain, they are retained,' and `Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.' I could not, I own, all at once see my way through these. They did look to say, `Unto whom the priest, that is the Church, denieth shrift, the same hath no forgiveness of God.' For a minute I was staggered, till a blind man came to help me up. Aunt Grena, you mind that blind man in the ninth chapter of Saint John's Gospel? He was cast forth of the Church, as the Church was in that day; and it was when our Lord heard that they had cast him forth, that He sought him and bade him believe only on Him, the Son of God. You marvel, Aunt, I may well see, that such meditations as these should come to your foolish maid Gertrude. But I was at a point, and an hard