"I will not swear!" came the ghastly whisper in reply. At this an astonishing change passed over the face that peered down from the brink. Its sane tranquillity became a very paroxysm of rage. The grotesque cap was dashed aside, and Grul sprang to his feet, waving his arms, stamping and leaping, his gaudy cloak a-flutter, his long white hair and beard twisting as if with a sentient fury of their own. He was so close upon the brink that I held my breath, expecting him to be plunged headlong. But all at once the paroxysm died out as suddenly as it had begun; and throwing himself down in his former position, Grul once more touched the knife edge to the rope, severing fibre by fibre, slowly, slowly. With the first touch upon the rope rose the Abbe's voice again, but no longer in vain entreaty and coward wailings. I listened with a great awe, and a sob broke from Mizpah's lips. It was the prayer for the passing soul. We heard it poured forth in steady tones but swift, against the blank face of the cliff. And we waited to see the rope divided at a stroke. But to our astonishment, Grul sprang to his feet again, in another fury, and flung aside his knife. With twitching hands he loosened the rope and began lowering his victim rapidly, till, within some twenty feet of the bottom, the Abbe found a footing, and stopped. Then Grul tossed the whole rope down upon him. "Go!" he cried in his chanting, bell-like tones. "The cup of your iniquity is not yet full. You shall not die till your soul is so black in every part that you will go down straight into hell!" And turning abruptly, he vanished. The Black Abbe, as if seized with a faintness, leaned against the rock for some minutes. Then, freeing himself from the rope, he climbed down to the foot of the cliff, and moved off slowly by the water's edge toward Cobequid. We trembled lest he should see us, or the canoe,--I having no stomach for an attack upon one who had just gone through so dreadful a torment. But his face, neck, ears, were like a sweating candle; and his contracted eyes seemed scarce to see the ground before his feet. "Seemed," I say. Yet even in this supreme moment, he tricked me. Chapter XVI I Cool My Adversaries' Courage