en must have spirited thee away. Why art thou here now?"

"To bid thee ask forgiveness for thy sins with thy dying breath,"
answered Raymond, gently yet firmly; "to bid thee turn thy thoughts for
one last moment towards thy Saviour, and though thou hast scorned and
rebelled against Him in life, to ask His pardoning mercy in death. He
has pardoned a dying miscreant ere now. Wilt thou not take upon thy lips
that dying thief's petition, and cry 'Lord, remember me;' or this
prayer, 'Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner'?"

A gray shadow was creeping over the rugged face, the lips seemed to
move, but no words came forth. There was no priest at hand to listen to
a dying confession, or to pronounce a priestly absolution, and yet
Raymond had spoken as if there might yet be mercy for an erring,
sin-stained soul, if it would but turn in its last agony to the
Crucified One -- the Saviour crucified for the sins of the whole world.

It must be remembered that there was less of priestcraft -- less of what
we now call popery -- in those earlier days than there came to be later
on; and the springs of truth, though somewhat tainted, were not
poisoned, as it were, at the very source, as they afterwards became.
Something of the purity of primitive times lingered in the minds of men,
and here and there were always found pure spirits upon whom the errors
of man obtained no hold -- spirits that seemed to rise superior to their
surroundings, and hold communion direct with heaven itself. Such a
nature and such a mind was Raymond's; and his clear, intense faith had
been strengthened and quickened by the vicissitudes through which he had
passed. He did not hesitate to point the dying soul straight to the
Saviour Himself, without mediation from the Blessed Virgin or the Holy
Saints. Love and revere these he might and did; but in the presence of
that mighty power of death, in that hour when flesh and heart do fail,
he felt as he had felt when he believed his own soul was to be called
away -- when it seemed as though no power could avail to save him from a
fearful fate -- that to God alone must the cry of the suffering soul be
raised; that into the Saviour's hands alone could the departing soul be
committed. He did not speak to others of these thoughts -- thoughts
which in later days came to be branded with the dreaded name of "heresy"
-- but he held them none the less surely in the depths of his own
spirit; and now, when all but he would have stood