He told of the cause of his anger and his drunken quarrel, of his evasion of his pursuers and his vow with Cassandra before God, of his rejection of Doctor Thryng's help and his flight by night, of his suffering and hunger. All was told without fervor,--a simple passive narration of events. No one could believe, while listening to him, that storms of passion and hatred and fear had torn him, or the overwhelming longing he had suffered at the thought of Cassandra. But when the bishop touched on the subject of repentance, the hidden force was revealed. It was as if the tormenting spirit within him had cried out loudly, instead of the low, monotonous tone in which he said:-- "Yas, I kin repent now he's dade, but ef he war livin' an' riled me agin that-a-way like he done--I reckon--I reckon God don't want no repentin' like I repents." It was steel against flint, the spark in the narrow blue line of his eyes as he said the words, and the bishop understood. But what to do with this man of the mountains--this force of nature in the wild; how guard him from a far more pernicious element in the civilized town life than any he would find in his rugged solitudes? And Cassandra! The bishop bowed his head and sat with the tips of his fingers pressed together. The thought of Cassandra weighed heavily upon him. She had given her promise, with the devotion of her kind, to save; had truly offered herself a living sacrifice. All hopes for her growth into the gracious womanhood her inheritance impelled her toward,--her sweet ambitions for study, gone to the winds--scattered like the fragrant wild rose petals on her own hillside--doomed by that promise to live as her mother had lived, and like other women of her kin, to age before her time with the bearing of children in the midst of toil too heavy for her--dispirited by privation and the sorrow of relinquished hopes. Oh, well the bishop knew! He dreaded most to see the beautiful light of aspiration die out of her eyes, and her spirit grow sordid in the life to which this untamed savage would inevitably bring her. "What a waste!" And again he repeated the words, "What a waste!" The youth looked up, thinking himself addressed, but the bishop saw only the girl. It was as if she rose and stood there, dominant in the sweet power of her girlish self-sacrifice, appealing to him to help save this soul. Somehow, at the moment, he failed to appreciate the beauty of such giving. Almost it seemed to him a pity Frale had thus far succeeded in evading his pursuers. It would have saved her in spite of herself had he been taken. But now the situation was forced upon the bishop, either to give him up, which seemed an arbitrary taking into his own hands of power which belonged only to the Almighty, or to shield him as best he might, giving heed to the thought that even if in his eyes the value of the girl was immeasurably the greater, yet the youth also was valued, or why was he here?