osest to his heart, no longer responded to his affection!
Was the pilot's prayer being fulfilled? Was he losing his own child in
return for the one he had refused to save? With a pang in his breast,
which was like an aching wound, he walked up and down on the floor and
marvelled at his own blindness. He had erred indeed; and there was no
hope that any chance would come to him to remedy the wrong.

The twilight had deepened into darkness while he revolved this trouble
in his mind. The night was stormy, and the limbs of the trees without
were continually knocking and bumping against the walls of the house.
The rusty weather-vane on the roof whined and screamed, and every now
and then the sleet dashed against the window-panes like a handful of
shot. The wind hurled itself against the walls, so that the timbers
creaked and pulled at the shutters, banged stray doors in out-of-the-way
garrets, and then, having accomplished its work, whirled away over the
fields with a wild and dismal howl. The pastor sat listening mournfully
to this tempestuous commotion. Once he thought he heard a noise as of a
door opening near by him, and softly closing; but as he saw no one, he
concluded it was his overwrought fancy that had played him a trick. He
seated himself again in his easy-chair before the stove, which spread a
dim light from its draught-hole into the surrounding gloom.

While he sat thus absorbed in his meditations, he was startled at the
sound of something resembling a sob. He arose to strike a light, but
found that his match-safe was empty. But what was that? A step without,
surely, and the groping of hands for the door-knob.

"Who is there?" cried the pastor, with a shivering uneasiness.

He sprang forward and opened the door. A broad figure, surmounted by a
sou'wester, loomed up in the dark.

"What do you want?" asked Mr. Holt, with forced calmness.

"I want to know," answered a gruff, hoarse voice, "if you'll come to my
son now, and help him into eternity?"

The pastor recognized Atle Pilot's voice, though it seemed harsher and
hoarser than usual.

"Sail across the fjord on a night like this?" he exclaimed.

"That's what I ask you."

"And the boy is dying, you say?"

"Can't last till morning."

"And has he asked for the sacrament?"

The pilot stepped across the threshold and entered the room. He
proceeded slowly to pull off his mittens; then looking up at the
pastor's face, upon which a vague sheen fell from th