eep you by my side. Go! Repent--and pray.'

The chaplain, with a look of malice on his face, walked, or rather
slunk, towards the door. 'You magnify my paltry sins,' he flung back.
'What of your own great ones?'

'Dare you, wretched man, to speak against your spiritual head!'
thundered the bishop, starting to his feet, vested with the imperious
authority of the Church. 'Go! Quit my sight, lest I cast you out from
amongst us! Go!'

Before the blaze of that righteous wrath, Cargrim, livid and trembling,
crept away like a beaten hound.

CHAPTER XXXIX

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

'Bell! Bell! do not give me up.'

'I must, Gabriel; it is my duty.'

'It is your cruelty! Ah, you never loved me as I love you.'

'That is truer than you think, my poor boy. I thought that I loved you,
but I was wrong. It was your position which made me anxious to marry
you; it was your weak nature which made me pity you. But I do not love
you; I never did love you; and it is better that you should know the
truth before we part.'

'Part? Oh, Bell! Bell!'

'Part,' repeated Bell, firmly, 'and for ever.'

Gabriel's head drooped on his breast, and he sighed as one, long past
tears, who hears the clods falling on the coffin in which his beloved
lies. He and Bell Mosk were seated in the little parlour at the back of
the bar, and they were alone in the house, save for one upstairs, in the
room of Mrs Mosk, who watched beside the dead. On hearing of her
husband's rash act, the poor wife, miserable as she had been with the
man, yet felt her earlier love for him so far revive as to declare that
her heart was broken. She moaned and wept and refused all comfort, until
one night she closed her eyes on the world which had been so harsh and
bitter. So Bell was an orphan, bereft of father and mother, and crushed
to the earth by sorrow and shame. In her own way she had loved her
father, and his evil deed and evil end had struck her to the heart. She
was even glad when her mother died, for she well knew that the sensitive
woman would never have held up her head again, after the disgrace which
had befallen her. And Bell, with a white face and dry eyes, long past
weeping, sat in the dingy parlour, refusing the only comfort which the
world could give her weary heart. Poor Bell! poor, pretty Bell!

'Think, Gabriel,' she continued, in a hard, tearless voice, 'think what
shame I would bring upon you were I weak enough to consent to become
your wife