'Keep heart, dear,' he said; and bravely tearless she echoed him. 'But, oh!' she said, 'be patient, and not rash, for the sake of those who love you.' 'O Rhoda, Rhoda! you do not know. I have a work this night. I think--I know it was meant for me. By Heaven, I think. My own sins have risen up against me now. They thwart. Hell itself striving against me has advantage by them. There must be some way. But I cannot see it. There must be! Oh! I cannot be condemned through turning back on an amended hope. So Heaven-sent I blessed it. No way--no way!' Muttering, he reached over to the rowan and absently fingered it, while Rhoda urged on him what she knew of reason. He turned on her a musing look. 'Rhoda, will you help me?' 'Oh, tell me to: never ask.' 'Take the rowan, and finish what I was about.' She broke down at last, and turned away in such a passion of sobbing as owned desertion of hope. 'Rhoda! You desert me, Rhoda!' in so broken a voice he said, that against all sense she cried: 'But I will! Yes, yes; trust me, I will!' and could not after retract when she saw his face. 'I am not mad,' he said; 'look at me: I am not.' And with that she knew not how to reconcile evidence. 'Be speedy against my return.' 'Is it possible? How?' she whispered. 'As God wills, I cannot know; but some way will show, must show.' Again she entreated against temerity, and for answer he taught her of a lonely spot, asking her to carry the threaded rowan there, and to wait his coming. 'If I do not come,' he said, 'I shall be----' 'Not dead!' she breathed. 'Oh, damned and dead,' he said. 'It cannot be. No. Yet, O Christian, should any harm befall you, avenged you shall be. Yes. No law can serve us here efficient against the tyranny of the League; but if in all the land high places of justice be, there will I go, and there denounce the practice of such outrage and wrong. Those four, they shall not escape from account. For that I will live--ay, even hazard living--I know.' 'You will not,' ordered Christian; 'for I myself freely have served the League, and have taken payment. And these four mean to deal justly; and I have no right to complain.' A hint of impatience sounded against the door, and Christian, with a last word enjoining secrecy, turned and lifted the latch. A forlorn sob complained. He caught both her hands in his. 'Dear heart, dear hands, a farewell were misdoubt,' he said, and on brow and hands he crossed her. 'A human soul shall bless your faithful doing.' He loosed and left her. She saw the door's blank exchange for him; she heard the brisk departure of feet; away fled the spurious confidence she had caught in his presence, and desolate and despairing, blind and choked with grief, she cursed her own folly and bewailed his.