re near."

"But if you do not believe in my power to absolve you or leave you
accursed, why did you ever confess to me?" cried Gesualdo.

"Because one must clear one's breast to somebody when one has a thing
like that on one's mind," answered the Girellone, "and I know you cannot
tell of it again."

And from that position nothing moved him. No entreaties, threats,
arguments, denunciations, stirred him a hair's-breadth. He had confessed
_per sfogarsi_: that was all.

But one night after Gesualdo had thus spoken to him, vague fears
assailed him,--terrors material, not spiritual: he had parted with his
secret: who could tell that it might not come out like a sleuth-hound
and find him and denounce him? He had told it to be at peace, but he was
not at peace. He feared every instant to have the hand of the law upon
him. Whenever he heard the trot of the carabineers' horses going through
the village, or saw the white belts and cocked hats of gendarmes in the
sunlight of the fields, a cold tremor of terror seized him lest the
priest should, after all, have told. He knew that it was impossible, and
yet he was afraid.

He counted up the money he had saved, a little roll of filthy and
crumpled bank-notes for very small amounts, and wondered if they would
be enough to take him across to America. They were very few, but his
fear compelled him to trust to them. He invented a story of remittances
which he had received from his brother, and told his fellow-laborers and
his employer that he was invited to join that brother; and then he
packed up his few clothes and went. At the mill and in the village they
talked a little of it, saying that the Girellone was in luck, but that
they for their parts would not care to go so far.

Gesualdo heard of his flight in the course of the day.

"My God!--gone away!--out of the country?" he cried, involuntarily, with
white lips.

The people who heard him wondered. "What could it matter to him that a
carter had gone to seek his fortunes over the seas?"

The Girellone had not been either such a good worker or such a good boon
companion that any one at the mill or in the village should greatly
regret him.

"America gets all our rubbish," said the people. "Much good may it do
her!"

Meantime, the man took his way across the country, and, sometimes by
walking, sometimes by lifts in wagons, sometimes by helping
charcoal-burners on the road, made his way, without spending much, to
the sea-coas