miling. Again the inner citadel
of his hope stood strong about him. Ruth was there to speak the word
that would free him! Her love would set him free! It was the time.
Ruth _knew_. He would rather have it this way. He was almost glad that
the Bishop had lied. Ruth _knew_. Ruth would speak.

The words of that terrible scream went searing through Ruth's brain
and down into the very roots of her being. Oh! for the power to shout
them out to the ends of the earth!

But she looked levelly at Dardis and in a clear voice answered:

"Nothing."

Then, at his word, she stumbled down out of the stand.

Again Jeffrey Whiting fell back into his seat.

_Ruth_ had _lied_!

The walls of his inner citadel had fallen in and crushed him.

VIII

SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?

The Bishop walked brokenly from the courthouse and turned up the
street toward the little church. He had not been the same man since
his experience of those two terrible nights in the hills. They had
aged him and shaken him visibly. But those nights of suffering and
superhuman effort had only attacked him physically. They had broken
the spring of his step and had drawn heavily upon the vigour and the
vital reserves which his years of simple living had left stored up in
him. He had fought with fire. He had looked death in the face. He had
roused his soul to master the passions of men. No man who has already
reached almost the full allotted span of life may do these things
without showing the outward effects of them. But these things had
struck only at the clay of the body. They had not touched the quick
spirit of the man within.

The trial through which he had passed to-day had cut deep into the
spiritual fibre of his being. If Joseph Winthrop had been given the
alternative of speaking his secret or giving up his life, he would
have offered the few years that might be his, without question or
halting. For he was a man of simple, single mind. He never quibbled or
thought of taking back any of the things which he had given to Christ.
Thirty years ago he had made his compact with the Master, and he had
never blinked the fact that every time a priest puts on a stole to
receive the secret of another's soul he puts his life in pledge for
the sanctity of that secret. It was a simple business, unclouded by
any perplexities or confusion.

Never had he thought of the alternative which had this day been forced
upon him. Years ago he had given his own life e