Dan did not hear. "Yes, I am guilty," he went on. "I have killed the man who loved me as his own soul. He would have given his life for my life, even as he gave his honor for my honor. And I slew him. Ewan! Ewan! my brother, my brother!" he cried, and where he sat he buried his face in his hands. The Bishop stood over his son with the same gentle calm that had come upon him in the cell, and with not one breath of the restless fever with which he entered it. Once again he tried to take Dan's hand and to hold it, and to meet with his own full orbs Dan's swimming eyes. "Yes, father, it is right that I should die, and it is necessary. Perhaps God will take my death as an atonement--" "Atonement!" "Or, if there is no atonement, there is only hell for my crime, and before God I am guilty." "Before God!" The Bishop echoed Dan's words in a dull, mechanical underbreath, and stood a long time silent while Dan poured forth his bitter remorse. Then he said, speaking with something of his own courageous calm of voice, from something like his own pure face, and with some of the upright wrinkles of his high forehead smoothed away: "Dan, I will go home and think. I seem to be awakening from a dreadful nightmare in a world where no God is, and no light reigns, but all is dark. To tell you the truth, Dan, I fear my faith is not what it was or should be. I thought I knew God's ways with his people, and then it seemed as if, after all these years, I had not known him. But I am only a poor priest, and a very weak old man. Good-night, my son, I will go home and think. I am like one who runs to save a child from a great peril and finds a man stronger than himself and braver--one who looks on death face to face and quails not. Good-night, Dan, I will go home and pray." And so he went his way, the man of God in his weakness. He left his son on the stone seat, with covered face, the lantern, and the parcel on the floor, and the door of the cell wide open. The keys he carried half-consciously in his hand. He stumbled along in the darkness down the winding steps, hewn from the rock, to the boat at the little wooden jetty, where a boatman sat awaiting him. The night was very dark, and the sea's loud moan and its dank salt breath were in the air. He did not see, he did not hear, he did not feel. But there was one in that lonesome place who saw his dark figure as he passed. "Who is there?" said an eager voice, as he went through the deep portcullis and out at the old notched and barred door ajar. But the Bishop neither answered nor heard. At the house in Castle Street, near to the quay, he stopped and knocked. The door was opened by the old sumner. "I've brought you the keys, Paton Gorry. Go back to your charge." "Did you lock the doors, my lord?" "Yes--no, no--I must have forgotten. I fear my mind--but it is of no moment. Go back, Paton--it will be enough." "I'll go, my lord," said the sumner. He went back, but others had been there before him.