“Father,” I said, “you can speak--you are awake again. I have something to tell you; something to say. Don’t move or utter a sound. You have been asleep all this time--only asleep. While you were unconscious old Peggy has been taken ill--very ill. In the fear of death she has made a confession. Father, I saw what you wrote on this--look, on this tablet! It was all untrue; I have wiped it out. It was Peggy killed Modred--she has confessed it.” He lifted his unstricken hand--the other was yet paralyzed--in an attitude of prayer. Presently his hand dropped and he turned his face to me, his eyes brimming with tears. “Renalt,” he murmured, in the poor shadow of a voice, “I thank my God--but the greater sin--I can never condone--though you forgive me--my son.” “Forgive? What have I to forgive, dad? My heart is as light as a feather.” He only gazed at me earnestly--pathetically. I went and sat by his side and smoothed his pillow and took his hand in mine. “Now the incubus is gone, dad, and you’ll get well. You must--I can’t do without you. The black shadow is passed from the mill, and the coming days are all full of sunshine.” “What has she--confessed? How did--she--do it?” “I didn’t wait to hear. I wanted you to know, and left her the moment she had spoken.” “Alone?” I hesitated and stammered. “There,” he said, with a faint smile, “I know--I know he’s in the house. I don’t fear--I don’t fear--I tell you. I’m--past that. He won’t want--to come in here?” He spoke all this time in a bodiless, low tone, and the effort seemed to exhaust him. For some time I sat by him, till he fell into a light slumber. No sound was in the house, and I did not even know if Dr. Crackenthorpe had left the adjoining room. But when my father was settled down and breathing quietly, I rose and stepped noiselessly thither to see. He was standing against the window, and turned stealthily round as I entered, watching me. As I walked toward him I glanced aside at the bed. Something about the pose of the figure thereon brought me to a sudden stop. My heart rose and fell with a sharp, quick emotion, and in the instant of it I knew that the old woman was dead. Her head had been propped against the bolster, so that her chin rested upon her withered breast. That would never beat again to the impulse of fear or evil or any kinder emotion, for Peggy had answered to her name. For the moment I stood stupefied. I think I had hardly realized that the end was so near. Sorrow I could not feel, but now regret leaped in me that I had not waited to hear all that she might tell. Only for an instant. On the next it flashed through me that it was better to put my trust in that first wild confession than to invite it by further questioning to self-condonation--perhaps actual denial. “You went too soon,” Dr. Crackenthorpe said, in a cold voice of irony. “I must tell you that was hardly decent.” “I never thought she had spoken her last.” “Nor had she--by a good deal.”