people good and bad at random in my time, but I am not afraid of the
resurrection."

"Ah! master Lancepesade, how happy those fair ladies are, to be so
near to a bishop, a holy man! They will get absolution for their
sins," said the old woman. "Oh! if I could only hear a priest say to
me, 'Thy sins are forgiven!' I should believe it then."

The stranger turned towards her, and the goodness in his face made her
tremble.

"Have faith," he said, "and you will be saved."

"May God reward you, good sir," she answered. "If what you say is
true, I will go on pilgrimage barefooted to Our Lady of Loretto to
pray to her for you and for me."

The two peasants, father and son, were silent, patient, and submissive
to the will of God, like folk whose wont it is to fall in
instinctively with the ways of Nature like cattle. At the one end of
the boat stood riches, pride, learning, debauchery, and crime--human
society, such as art and thought and education and worldly interests
and laws have made it; and at this end there was terror and wailing,
innumerable different impulses all repressed by hideous doubts--at
this end, and at this only, the agony of fear.

Above all these human lives stood a strong man, the skipper; no doubts
assailed him, the chief, the king, the fatalist among them. He was
trusting in himself rather than in Providence, crying, "Bail away!"
instead of "Holy Virgin," defying the storm, in fact, and struggling