"How can you torture a poor dying man?" muttered Stephen Orry.

"Call on the Lord, mate," shouted Kane Wade, "'Lord, I belave, help
Thou my unbelafe.'"

"I've something to do, and the pains of death have hold of me,"
muttered Stephen Orry.

"He parthoned the thafe on the cross," cried old Chalse, "and he's
gotten parthon left for you."

"Cruel, cruel! Have you no pity for a wretched dying man?" mumbled
Stephen Orry.

"Ye've not lived a right life, brother," cried Kane Wade, "and ye've
been ever wake in yer intellects, so never take rest till ye've read
your title clear."

"You would scarce think they could have the heart, these people--you
would scarce think it, would you?" said Stephen Orry, lifting his
poor glassy eyes to Greeba's face.

Then with the same quiet grace as before, the girl got up, and gently
pushed the men out of the house one by one. "Come back in an hour,"
she whispered.

It was a gruesome spectacle--the rude Methodists, with their loud
voices and hot faces and eyes of flame, trying to do their duty by
the soul of their fellow creature; the poor tortured sinner, who knew
he had lived an evil life and saw no hope of pardon, and would not be
so much a coward as to cry for mercy in his last hours; the young
Icelander looking on in silence and surprise: and the girl moving
hither and thither among them all, like a soft-voiced dove in a cage
of hoarse jackdaws.

But when the little house was clear, and the Methodists, who started
a hymn on the beach outside, had gone at last, and their singing had
faded away, and there was only the low wail of the ebbing tide where
there had been so loud a Babel of many tongues, Stephen Orry raised
himself feebly on his elbow and asked for his coat. Jason found it on
the hearth and lifted it up, still damp and stiff, from the puddle of
water that lay under it. Then Stephen Orry told him to put his hand
in the breast pocket and take out what he would find there. Jason did
as he was bidden and drew forth the bag of money. "Here it is," he
said; "what shall I do with it?"

"It is yours," said Stephen Orry.

"Mine?" said Jason.

"I meant it for my son," said Stephen Orry. He spoke in his broken
English, but let us take the words out of his mouth. "It's yours now,
my lad. Fourteen years I've been gathering it, meaning it for my son.
Little I thought to part with it to a stranger, but it's yours, for
you've earned it."

"No, no," said Jason. "I've earned noth