"Why did you weep over Isabel Munn's grave, Bartholomew?"

"Speak no evil of the dead," he cried wildly.

"It is not in my mind. She was a good and pure woman. What would she
have been if she had listened to you?"

"What do you know? Who betrayed me?"

"You, yourself. When you came down with pneumonia after the burial, I
sat with you through a night of delirium."

Bartholomew Storrs bowed his head.

"My sin hath found me out," he groaned. "God knows I loved her, and--and
I hadn't the strength not to tell her. I'd have given up everything for
her, my hope of heaven, my--my--I 'd have given up my office and gone
away from God's Acre! And that was twenty years ago. I--I don't sleep o'
nights yet, for thinking."

"Well, you ain't the only one," said the dull voice of Mr. Hines.

"You're tempting me!" Bartholomew Storrs snarled at him. "You're trying
to make me false to my trust."

"Just to let her lie by her mother, like her mother would ask you if she
could."

"Don't say it to me!" He beat his head with his clenched hand.
Recovering command of himself, he straightened up, taking a deep breath: