wife of my soul!"

She drew him closer, and said with the eagerness of one in great
haste, "Oh, my dear one, I shall soon be nearer to God than you. At
his feet I will pray. Tell me--tell me quick, what shall I ask for
you? Liot, dear one, tell me!"

"Ask that I may be forgiven _all_ my sins."

"Is there one great sin, dear one? Oh, tell me now--one about Bele
Trenby? Speak quickly, Liot. Did you see him die?"

"I did, but I hurt him not."

"He went into the moss?"

"Yes."

"You could have saved him and did not?"

"If I had spoken in time; there was but a single moment--I know
not what prevented me. O Karen, I have suffered! I have suffered a
thousand deaths!"

"My dear one, I have known it. Now we will pray together--I in
heaven, thou on earth. Fear not, dear, dear Liot; he spareth all;
they are his. The Lord is the lover of souls."

These were her last words. With clasped hands and wide-open eyes she
lay still, watching and listening, ready to follow when beckoned, and
looking with fixed vision, as if seeing things invisible, into the
darkness she was about to penetrate. Steeped to his lips in anguish,
Liot stood motionless until a dying breath fluttered through the
room; and he knew by his sudden sense of loss and loneliness that
she was gone, and that for this life he was alone forevermore.

-----
[Footnote 2: Shoes made of untanned cowhide.]

III

A SENTENCE FOR LIFE

All Lerwick had been anticipating the death of Karen, but when it
came there was a shock. She was so young and so well loved, besides
which her affectionate heart hid a great spirit; and there was a
general hope that for her husband's and child's sake she would hold
on to life. For, in spite of all reasoning, there remains deep in the
heart of man a sense of mastery over his own destiny--a conviction
that we do not die until we are willing to die. We "resign" our
spirits; we "commit" them to our Creator; we "_give up_ the ghost";
and it did not seem possible to the wives and mothers of Lerwick
that Karen would "give up" living. Her mortality was so finely
blended with her immortality, it was hard to believe in such early
dissolution. Alas! the finer the nature, the more readily it is
fretted to decay by underlying wrong or doubt. When Matilda Sabiston
drove Karen down to the sea-shore on the day before her bridal she
really gave her the death-blow.

For Karen needed more than the bread and love of mortal life to
sustain