“If you bring it down to expediency, it’s simple enough,” Gifford Woodhouse said; “it was obviously inexpedient. Even if she had married him, and simply remembered, would either of them have been any better off? Would any end have been subserved by putting such painful knowledge on her conscience as well as his own? It was not as though there was a lady ‘with nine small children and one at the breast’ somewhere round the corner in the Past, who might turn up some day. That sort of sin affects the relation of the man and woman, and it may be simple prudence to confess. Though I think there is a question, even there. But in this case expediency, you might even call it unselfishness, would make him hold his tongue. The only thing is, perhaps there is something higher than expediency?” They had reached Mr. Paul’s door; he pitched his cigar into the street and pulled out his keys, shaking them on the end of their chain. “You mean, abstractly, is it right or wrong, under circumstances like these, where no third person is to be cleared or benefited, to tell? Does honor demand confession?” “Yes,” said the vestryman; “was it a duty to speak, or a duty to be silent?” There was a moment’s silence. “Was West a fool or a saint?” insisted the younger man. “I’ll be hanged if I know,” said the senior warden. THE HOUSE OF RIMMON I THE Rev. Silas Eaton was dead. It was May, and the little orchard behind the parsonage was like a white and perfumed cloak flung on the shoulder of a bare hillside which was, all the rest of it, rocky pasture. Under the trees, and in the shelter of the stone walls, the grass was growing green. The apple blossoms were just beginning to fall; in any breath of wind single petals, white, stained outside with crimson, came down in flurries, like gusts of warm and aromatic snow. There was a stir of life everywhere. In the parsonage garden crown imperials had pushed their strong stalks through the damp earth, and peonies were reaching up long slender arms, each with its red curled fist of leaves, reluctant to expand until certain of the sun. The ground was spongy beneath the foot, and there were small springs bubbling up under every winter-bleached tuft of last year’s grass. The air, full of the scent of earth and growing things, was warm and sweet, yet with an edge of cold--the sword of frost in a velvet scabbard. Life--life: and in the upper chamber of the parsonage the master lay dead.