And we felt it was true. And so the service ended. And once more the household scattered. For Roger had yet to return, and we all felt a family-gathering would be a welcome he could ill bear. So Aunt Dorothy went to her chamber, and Aunt Gretel to her German hymn-book by the fireside, and I to my place at her feet, and then to watch from the porch. For my Father went out to meet Roger. And of that meeting neither of them ever spoke. They came back together, my Father's hand on Roger's shoulder, half as on a child's for tenderness, half as an old man's on a son's for support. "Sir Launcelot is out of danger!" said my Father, when he came into the hall. Roger kissed me and Aunt Gretel as he passed, and took my hand and tried to say something; but said nothing, only let me sob a minute on his shoulder, and then went up to his chamber. We were used rather to repress than to give utterance to feeling in our Puritan households. And Lion was the only person who made much show of what he felt, twisting and whining and fondling round Roger in a way very unsuited to his giant bulk. We heard him pacing after Roger to the foot of the great staircase. Upstairs no dog under Aunt Dorothy's rule would venture, under the strongest excitement; so after lying expectant at its foot for some time, Lion returned to express his satisfaction in a more composed manner to me. At family-prayer that night, my Father made one brief allusion of fervent thankfulness to the mercy of the day. More neither he nor Roger could have borne. And so that Sabbath of unrest ended. To us, but not to Roger; although I only learned this long afterwards. For no lamp marked the watch of agony he kept that night. And on his haggard countenance, when he came down the next morning, no one dared question nor comment. For while others rejoiced in the deliverance, he writhed in agony under the burden and in the coils of his sin. The accident of the log being at hand, that might have made it murder, and the other accident, that the wound had not been an inch nearer the temple or a barley-corn deeper, made absolutely no difference in the burden that weighed on him. If Sir Launcelot had died, the punishment would have been heavier; but not the remorse. And although his living was the deepest cause of thankfulness, yet it was no lightening of the sin. For it was the fountain of the sin within that was Roger's misery; the fountain deep in the heart. Now he began to feel the meaning of the words, "Out of the heart." Now the old difficulties he and I had discussed in the apple-tree and in the herb-chamber rushed back on him. Now he began to feel that it was no mere entertaining question in metaphysical dynamics whether he was a free agent or not, but a question of moral and eternal life or death.