e was omniscient; it came
to him as a shock that he might be unaware of how God had written on
the ice. Usually in talking with the priest he took short-cuts in his
methods of communication, leaving many things understood but
unmentioned, as a man is wont to do when conversing with himself.

"There is no doubt that it was God," he said; "He did not want me to
murder this man. He wished that I should leave him alone, to be judged
in the forest by Himself. Therefore, if you have brought him here with
you to make us friends, I will not do that; but I will promise you, as
I have promised God, that I will not be his enemy."

Antoine tapped him on the arm gently, looking him full in the face
with his grave, penetrating eyes: "And did not God Himself arrive too
late?" he asked.

Granger flushed hotly, for he thought that he detected an under-tone
of accusation in the way in which those words were uttered. "Tell me,
is he dead?" he asked abruptly.

"He is dead."

"Is it . . . is that his body over there?"

"You should know best."

Involuntarily Granger sank his voice, now that he knew that that
sleeping man was dead. He pressed closer to the priest and commenced
to whisper, now that he knew that no noise of his, however loud, could
disturb the rest of this man who would never wake. Sometimes, when in
the hurry of his speech his voice had been by accident a little
raised, he would cease speaking, lift up his head, and peer furtively
from side to side, then over to where the dead man lay, to make
certain that he had not stirred,--all this lest someone in that great
silence should have heard what he had said. Thus does the presence of
the dead accuse living men, as if by our mere retention of life we did
them injury. Wheresoever we encounter them, whether in the hired pride
of the vulgar city hearse, or in the pitiful disarray of bleached
bones and tattered raiment strewn on a mountainside, they make even
those of us who are remotest from blame feel guilty men.

"But, Pere Antoine, I did not kill him," Granger was saying. "I was
gravely tempted, but God wrote upon the ice and stayed my hand. This
man was once my friend, and is now again--now that he is dead. Let me
uncover and look upon his face."

But the priest withheld him. "Not yet--not yet," he said. "Let us
first talk together awhile, that I may hear what has happened, and get
to understand."

So there in the quiet of the early morning, with nothing to break the