"Think!" said Jean. "If you keep silence, you screen the murderer. If you keep silence, you are the murderer's accomplice. We have sworn over our father's dead body to avenge him--if you refuse to speak, we will avenge him on _you_. I charge you again, name the man who killed him." "I will die first," the priest reiterated, as firmly as before. "Die then!" said Jean. "Die in that cauldron of boiling oil." "Give him time," cried Louis and Thomas, earnestly pleading together. "We will give him time," said the younger brother. "There is the clock yonder, against the wall. We will count five minutes by it. In those five minutes, let him make his peace with God--or make up his mind to speak." They waited, watching the clock. In that dreadful interval, the priest dropped on his knees and hid his face. The time passed in dead silence. "Speak! for your own sake, for our sakes, speak!" said Thomas Siadoux, as the minute hand reached the point at which the five minutes expired. The priest looked up--his voice died away on his lips--the mortal agony broke out on his face in great drops of sweat--his head sank forward on his breast. "Lift him!" cried Jean, seizing the priest on one side. "Lift him, and throw him in!" The two elder brothers advanced a step--and hesitated. "Lift him, on your oath over our father's body!" The two brothers seized him on the other side. As they lifted him to a level with the cauldron, the horror of the death that threatened him, burst from the lips of the miserable man in a scream of terror. The brothers held him firm at the cauldron's edge. "Name the man!" they said for the last time. The priest's teeth chattered--he was speechless. But he made a sign with his head--a sign in the affirmative. They placed him in a chair, and waited patiently until he was able to speak. His first words were words of entreaty. He begged Thomas Siadoux to give him back the crucifix. When it was placed in his possession, he kissed it, and said faintly, "I ask pardon of God for the sin that I am about to commit." He paused; and then looked up at the younger brother, who still stood in front of him. "I am ready," he said. "Question me, and I will answer." Jean repeated the questions which he had put, when the priest was first brought into the room. "You know the murderer of our father?" "I know him." "Since when?" "Since he made his confession to me yesterday, in the cathedral of Toulouse." "Name him." "His name is Cantegrel." "The man who wanted to marry our aunt?" "The same." "What brought him to the confessional?" "His own remorse." "What were the motives for his crime?" "There were reports against his character; and he discovered that your father had gone privately to Narbonne to make sure that they were true." "Did our father make sure of their truth?" "He did." "Would those discoveries have separated our aunt from Cantegrel if our father had lived to tell her of them?"