I must also remark that Huriel would probably have frightened me if I had met him alone in the gloom of the morning. He was more daubed with black than I had ever seen him, and a cloth bound round his head hid his hair and his forehead, so that all one saw of his face was his big eyes, which seemed sunken and as if they had lost their usual fire. In fact, he looked like his own spirit rather than his own body, and he glided gently upon the heather as if he feared to awaken even the crickets and the gnats which were asleep in it. The monk was the first to speak; not as a man who accosts another, but as one who continues a conversation after a break in it. "As he is here," he said, pointing to me, "it is best to give him some useful instructions, and I was on the point of telling him--" "As you have told him everything--" began Huriel, cutting him short with a reproachful look. Here I, in turn, interrupted Huriel to tell him I knew nothing as yet, and that he was free to conceal what he was just going to say. "That's all right in you," replied Huriel, "not to seek to know more than you need; but if this is the way, Brother Nicolas, that you keep a secret of such importance, I am sorry I ever trusted you." "Fear nothing," said the Carmelite. "I thought the young man was compromised with you." "He is not compromised at all, thank God!" said Huriel; "one is enough!" "So much the better for him if he only sinned by intention," replied the monk. "He is your friend, and you have nothing to fear. But as for me, I should be glad if he would tell no one that I passed the night in these woods." "What harm could that do you?" asked Huriel. "A muleteer met with an accident; you succored him, and thanks to you, he will soon be well. Who can blame you for that charity?" "True, true," said the monk. "Keep the phial and use the stuff twice a day. Wash the wound carefully in running water as often as you can do so; don't let the hair stick in the wound, and keep it covered from dust; that is all that is necessary. If you have any fever get yourself well bled by the first friar you meet." "Thank you," said Huriel, "but I have lost enough blood as it is, and I think we can never have too much. May you be rewarded, my brother, for your kind help, which I did not greatly need, but for which I am none the less grateful. And now permit us to say good-bye, for it is daylight and your prayers have detained you here too long." "No doubt," answered the monk, "but will you let me depart without a word of confession? I have cured your flesh,--that was the first thing to be done; but is your conscience in any better state? Do you think you have no need of absolution, which is to the soul what that balsam is to the body?"