r can I not, do a thing?' Aye,
lost, lost am I!"

Apparently this outburst caused the man to reach the end of his power,
for presently he sank from knees to heels--then on to his side, with
hands clasping his head, and his tongue finally uttering the words,
"Better had you kill me!"

A hush fell, for all now stood confounded and silent, with, about them,
a greyer, a more subdued, look which made all more resemble their
fellows. In fact, to all had the atmosphere become oppressive, as
though everyone's breast had had clamped into it a large, soft clod of
humid, viscid earth. Until at last someone said in a low, shamefaced,
but friendly, tone:

"Good brother, we are not your judges."

To which someone else added with an equal measure of gentleness:

"Indeed, we may be no better than you."

"We pity you, but we must not judge you. Only pity is permitted."

As for the well-dressed peasant, his loud, triumphant utterance was:

"Let God judge him, but men suffer him. Of judging of one another there
has been enough."

And a fifth man remarked to a friend as he walked away:

"What are we to make of this? To judge by the book, the young fellow is
at once guilty and not guilty."

"Bygones ought to be bygones. Of all courses that is the best."

"Yes, for we are too quick. What good can that do?"

"Aye, what?"

At length the dark-browed woman stepped forward. Letting her shawl to
her shoulders, straightening hair streaked with grey under a bright
blue scarf, and deftly putting aside a skirt she so seated herself
beside the young fellow as to screen from the crowd with the height of
her figure. Then, raising kindly face, she said civilly, but
authoritatively, to the bystanders:

"Do all of you go away."

Whereupon the crowd began to depart, the big peasant saying as he went:

"There! Just as I foretold has the matter turned out. Conscience HAS
asserted itself."

Yet the words were spoken without self-complacency, rather,
thoughtfully, and with a sense of awe.

As for the red-nosed old man who was walking like a shadow behind the
last speaker, he opened his snuff-box, peered therein with his moist
eyes, and drawled to no one in particular:

"How often does one see a man play with conscience, yes, even though he
be a rogue! He erects that conscience as a screen to his knaveries and
tricks and wiles, and masks the whole with a cloud of words. Yes, we
know how it is done, even though folk may stare at him, and