truth ; he will be at  with 
himself, and forget before the summer comes. He never has 



SIQNA. 497 

loved me,  not mnch. What does it matter  bo that he is 
Bayed ? When he sees his mother in heaven some day, then 
she urill say to him, * It was done for your sake.' And I shall 
know that he sees then, as Gk)d sees. That will he enough." 

And he refused to have  on himself, and hardened 
his , and faced the red of the breaking day with his re- 
solve stronger and firmer in his , till he seemed to himself 
to be no more a man with nerves to  and  to suffer, 
but a  of iron set to vengeance as a clock is  to 
strike. 

There was no other way,  that was what he thought ; no 
other way to turn the boy to innocence, and spare him ever 
any knowledge of the truth. 

The same terrible sense of crime as duty which of old 
nerved the hands of Judith and of Jael came on him now. 
In the great blindness that was upon him it seemed to him 
that to shrink from this act set to him would be the feeblest 
cowardice. It seemed to him that all the forces of Satan were 
at war with him, and that not