ice, in a low tone, he
gasped:

"No!"

"Scoundrel!" cried the priest.

And he struck him in the face. After that neither man made a move for
a while. Then the priest went at it again.

"At least you will die holding a crucifix," he snarled.

He drew a crucifix from his pocket, and put it down hard on his breast.

The other man shook himself in a dull horror, as if religion were
contagious, and threw the crucifix on the floor.

The priest stooped, mumbling insults. "Carrion, you want to die like a
dog, but I am here!" He picked up the crucifix, and with a gleam in
his eyes, sure of crushing him, waited for his final chance.

The dying man panted, completely at the end of his strength. The
priest, seeing him in his power, laid the crucifix on his breast again.
This time the other man let it stay there, unable to do anything but
look at it with eyes of hatred. But his eyes did not make it fall.

. . . . .

When the black man had gone out into the night, and the patient little
by little recovered from the struggle and felt free once more, it
occurred to me that the priest in his violence and coarseness was
horribly right. A bad priest? No, a good priest, who spoke strictly
according to his conscience and belief, and tried to apply his religion
simply, such as it was, without hypocritical concessions. Ignorant,
clumsy, gross--yes, but honest and logical even in his fearful attempt.
In the half-hour that I had listened to him, he had tried by all the
means that religion uses and recommends to follow his calling of making
converts and giving absolution. He had said everything that a priest
cannot help saying. Every dogma had come out clearly and definitely
from the mouth of this rough, common hewer of wood and drawer of water
for his religion. If the sick man was right, so was the priest.

. . . . .

What was that thing near the bed, that thing which loomed so high and
did not stir and had not been there a moment before? It stood between
me and the leaping flame of the candle placed near the sick man.

I accidentally made a little noise in leaning against the wall, and
very slowly the thing turned a face toward me with a frightened look on
it that frightened me.

I knew that head. Was it not the landlord himself, a man with peculiar
ways, whom we seldom saw?

He had been walking up and down the hall, waiting for the sick man to
be left alone. And now he was standing beside him as he lay in bed