“I would not have sent for thee now, but if I did not, a damning crime would stain thy soul and mine; _mine_, because I alone can reveal to thee its nature; _thine_, because thy sin led the way to it.” “_My_ sin, woman! gain is righteousness, loss is sin, I know no other description for either: I believe not as priestlings prate, nor didst thou once, although, like other unbelievers, we held our tongue for fear of Mother Church with her discipline of fire and faggot, for if we had said that we believed not in hell hereafter, she would have created one for us here.” “Enough, hadst thou seen what I have seen, thou wouldst know there is a God and a terrible one, and that the worst flames Churchmen kindle here for heretics are no more in comparison with those which await the unforgiven sinner, than painted flames compare with those which wither up the unbeliever or witch in Smithfield.” “I came not here to hear a sermon, Madge; what further crime hast thou to warn me against? I would not commit _useless_ ones.” “Dost thou remember when thy brother’s widow bare a poor babe, who never saw its father’s face?” “I do, as thou knowest, too well; it was a great disappointment to me.” “And while the mother slept in insensibility, thou didst bid me stifle the child, and say it was still-born, because thou wast as thy brother’s heir in possession of the property?” “Why repeat this idle tale, it is all over and gone? Art thou alone? art thou sure there is none here?” “Sure, yes, quite sure; none at least clothed in flesh and blood like ourselves, but how many unseen beings hover around us I know not.” Sir John could not help trembling, there was such a ghastly realism in her words, and the fast decaying light made him long to leave the place. “Well, thou didst it for love of thy foster son, and thou hast been fool enough to confess it to this meddling priest?” “Not yet, I waited to see thee first, and tell thee what I _really_ did.” “_Really_ did? didst thou not murder the babe?” “Nay, I substituted a beggar’s dead brat from a gipsy camp, hard by, for thy brother’s heir, and showed thee its body, and thou didst blanch, but yet nerve thy coward soul to say ‘well done;’ meanwhile I hid the young heir, and when thou wert gone to court I restored the babe to the mother, bidding her flee the castle with it ere thou didst return.” “Can this be true? How wilt thou prove it now?” “Listen; a month later, when the poor dame was well again, came a letter to bid us prepare for that return; I did not dare to let thee find the child alive, and bade the mother flee. It was the third day after Christmas, the Holy Innocents’ day: to whose intercession she commended her babe.” “And she fled?”