As for me, each time when I came home from my grand-uncle's with pale
cheeks she would forbid me ever to cross his threshold more: but when his
bidding was brought me she likewise was moved to compassion, and suffered
me to obey.

Nevertheless, if I had not been more than common strong, thank the
Saints, long sitting with the sick man would of a certainty have done me
a mischief, for body and soul had much to endure. Meseemed that pain had
loosened the tongue of that hitherto wordless old man, and whereas he had
ever held his head high above all men, he would now abase himself before
the humblest. He would stay any man or woman who would tarry, to tell
of all his sufferings, and of what he endured in mind and body. His
confessor had indeed forbidden him to complain of the evil wherewith
Heaven had punished him, but none could hinder him from bewailing the
evil he had committed in his sinfulness and vanity. And his self-
accusings were so manifold and fearful, that I was fain to believe his
declaration that all he had ever thought or done that was good was, as it
were, buried; and that nought but the ill he had suffered and committed
was left and still had power over him. The death-stroke he had dealt all
unwittingly, in heedless passion, rose before his soul day and night as
an accursed and bloody deed; and every moment embittered by his wife's
unfaith, even to the last hour when, on her death-bed, she cursed him,
he lived through again, night after night. Whereupon he would clasp his
thin hands, through which you might see the light, over his tear-stained
face and would not be still or of better cheer till I could no longer
hide my own great grief for him.

Howbeit, when I had heard the same tale again and again it ceased from
touching me so deeply; so that at last, instead of such deep compassion,
it moved me only to dull gloom and, I will confess, to unspeakable