Harry Carthew rose from the window-seat. His face was yet without colour, drawn and sunken, grim and set. For the most part, with an iron effort, he kept his voice under control, but now it broke and sank and now it took a cadence of pain and horror. He leaned against the wall for support, and once or twice he lifted his eyes to where, in his thought, there sat God whom he had angered. “Master Clement, and my friend here,” he said, “God knows I cannot doubt that this man is a sorcerer and this woman a witch! In his Bible God tells us that there are such and commands that they be done to death. Moreover, from old time, wise judges and men of law and knowledge, and devout and holy preachers of the Word have showed us how these wicked abound! As for these two, all manner of witness was brought against them, and proof irrefragable. Yea, and those who were hanged confessed that these two kept by day and by night companionship with Satan and did monstrous wickednesses. And that the man is an apostate and blasphemer, an atheist worthy of death, has been proved—nay, he himself denied nothing in that sort. All that, and the doom pronounced against them, in this world and in the next, stands for true and lasting, and I have no part in it, and there the shadow comes not against me.... But there is a sin upon my soul, and God gives me no rest until I tell it—” He wheeled toward Master Clement. “I will tell it here and now, and appoint me a day and I will tell it in open church—So may offended God pardon me!” “Harry Carthew! Harry Carthew!” cried Master Clement. “Every man alive has sin against his soul! The soul of every man alive is black as midnight, and no dawn cometh to it save from one that is not himself! Unless and save the dayspring chooseth to shine upon that soul, it resteth black and lost—it hath in itself no power of motion and light! But God hath elected thee, Harry Carthew! But this man and woman are of the deep gulf of hell, predestined and damned of eternity! What have you to do with them, my brother, my son—for Christ knoweth I love thee as a son—” “What had I to do with them?” said Carthew. “I will tell you! At the trial in the town I gave evidence that he struck me in the side with a dagger that eve upon his road to prison. I lied. Sorcerer and atheist though he be, he told truth when he said that he did not so. And witch though she be, this woman told truth when there in the court she cried out against me. She told truth when she cried that that night I had come to her cottage to tempt her and that she struck me with a hunting-knife.... What was I? I was a young man, mad for a fair woman—fair as her mother Eve who sinned before her! What was I? I was a man desirous to increase in name and fame, desirous of leadership—who therefore must not let men view his sin! But it was sin, and I know not if there be a greater—”