w moonlight, carrying in his arms the bleeding body of the poor
lad who had shared his food with us and slept on our hearth. Hush! hush!
Don't groan and sob in that way! Stifle it with the bedclothes. Hush!
you'll wake them in the next room!"

"Gabriel--Gabriel!" exclaimed a voice from behind the partition. "What
has happened? Gabriel! let me come out and be with you!"

"No! no!" cried the old man, collecting the last remains of his strength
in the attempt to speak above the wind, which was just then howling at
the loudest; "stay where you are--don't speak, don't come out--I command
you! Gabriel" (his voice dropped to a faint whisper), "raise me up in
bed--you must hear the whole of it now; raise me; I'm choking so that
I can hardly speak. Keep close and listen--I can't say much more. Where
was I?--Ah, your father! He threatened to kill me if I didn't swear to
keep it secret; and in terror of my life I swore. He made me help him to
carry the body--we took it all across the heath--oh! horrible, horrible,
under the bright moon--(lift me higher, Gabriel). You know the great
stones yonder, set up by the heathens; you know the hollow place under
the stones they call 'The Merchant's Table'; we had plenty of room to
lay him in that, and hide him so; and then we ran back to the cottage. I
never dared to go near the place afterward; no, nor your father either!
(Higher, Gabriel! I'm choking again.) We burned the pocket-book and the
knapsack--never knew his name--we kept the money to spend. (You're not
lifting me; you're not listening close enough!) Your father said it was
a legacy, when you and your mother asked about the money. (You hurt me,
you shake me to pieces, Gabriel, when you sob like that.) It brought
a curse on us, the money; the curse has drowned your father and your
brother; the curse is killing me; but I've confessed--tell the priest I
confessed before I died. Stop her; stop Perrine! I hear her getting up.
Take his bones away from the Merchant's Table, and bury them for the
love of God! and tell the priest (lift me higher, lift me till I am
on my knees)--if your father was alive, he'd murder me; but tell the
priest--because of my guilty soul--to pray, and--remember the Merchant's
Table--to bury, and to pray--to pray always for--"

As long as Perrine heard faintly the whispering of the old man, though
no word that he said reached her ear, she shrank from opening the door
in the partition. But, when the whispering sou