outward garment of the Church, but still she would not be free to
speak the words. The Church itself could not free her from the seal of
the secret. What use, then, to fly from the Church, to throw off the
Church, when the bands of silence would still lie mighty and
unbreakable across her lips.

That awful night on the Gaunt Rocks flamed up before her, and what she
saw held her.

What she saw was not merely a church giving a sacrament. It was not
the dramatic falling of a penitent at the feet of a priest. It was not
a poor Frenchman of the hills screaming out his crime in the agony and
fear of death.

What she saw was a world, herself standing all alone in it. What she
saw was the soul of the world giving up its sin into the scale of God
from which--Heart break or world burn!--that sin must never be
disturbed.

As she went slowly across the front of the room in answer to her name,
a girl came out of one of the aisles and stood almost in her path.
Ruth looked up and found herself staring dully into the fierce,
piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal. She saw the look in those eyes which
she had recognised for the first time that day at French Village--the
terrible mother-hunger look of love, ready to die for its own. And
though the girl said nothing, Ruth could hear the warning words:
Remember! You love Jeffrey Whiting.

How well that girl knew!

Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a point which he had not
been able to correct in the testimony of Myron Stocking. But since he
had dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to the Bishop, he had
become more desperate, and bolder. Ruth might speak. And there was
always a chance that the dying man had said something to her.

"You were with Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon when word was brought
to him that suspicious men had been seen in the hills?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Was the name of Rogers mentioned by either Stocking or Whiting?"

"No, sir."

Then he flashed the question upon her:

"What did Rafe Gadbeau say when he was dying?"

Ruth staggered, quivering in every nerve. The impact of the sudden,
startling question leaping upon her over-wrought mind was nothing to
what followed. For, in answer to the question, there came a scream, a
terrified, agonised scream, mingled of fright and remorse and--relief.
A scream out of the fire. A scream from death. _On my knee I dropped
and shot him, shot Rogers as he stood._

Again Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward s