He bent over the sick man, and felt his head and his hands, "I think you may be easy, Wally," he said, "he does not appear to me like a dying man." Wally sat motionless, gazing fixedly before her. "If the doctor comes and says that he'll live, I care for nothing more in this world," she said. "That is right, Wally, I am glad to hear you say that," said the curé approvingly, "and now relate to me how it was that Joseph was saved--that will help to shorten the time till the doctor comes." "There's not much to tell," answered Wally shortly. "Nay, it is a noble deed that does honour to the men of the Sonnenplatte," said the priest, "were you not there?" "Oh yes!" "Well then, be less short in your answers. I spoke with no one on the way, and have heard nothing about it. Who fetched him up from the ravine?" "I!" "God be gracious! You, Wally? you yourself?" cried the old man, staring at her with astonishment. "Yes--I!" "But how can you have done it?" "They let me down by a rope, and I found him fixed between a rock and the trunk of a fir-tree; if the tree had not been there he must have fallen into the torrent, and no one'd ever have seen him alive again." "Child," cried the old man, "that is a great thing to have done." "May be so," she answered quietly, almost hardly, "as I'd had him thrown yonder, it was for me to fetch him up again." "You are right,--that was only fair," said the priest, controlling his emotion with difficulty. "But it is not the less an act of atonement that may take some part of the guilt from your hapless soul." "That is all nothing," said Wally, shaking her head. "If he dies, it's I that have murdered him." "That is true, but you gave a life for a life. You risked your own to save his; you have atoned as far as was in your power for the crime you have committed--the issue is in God's hands." Wally heaved a deep sigh; she could not take in the comfort that lay in the priest's words. "The issue is in God's hand," she repeated out of the depths of her burdened heart. The eye of the priest rested on her with content; God would not reject this soul, in spite of its great faults and imperfections. Never yet, old as he was, had he met with her equal in power for good, as for evil. He looked at the wounded man who unconsciously clenched his fist in defiance. It almost angered him that he should despise the noblest gift that earth can offer man--a devoted love; that through his indifference he should have had it in his power to harden a heart so noble in its nature and capable of such high-minded sacrifice. "You stupid peasant-lout," he muttered between his teeth. Wally looked at him enquiringly: she had not understood.