into the presence of his penitent. What the dying sorcerer's
confession was the blind man never knew; but after it was over,
and the Sacred Host had passed his lips, Raoul was summoned to his
bedside, where a strange and solemn voice greeted him by name and
thanked him for the service he had rendered.

"Friend," said the dying man, "you will never know how great a debt
I owe you. But before I pass out of the world, I would fain do
somewhat towards repayment. Sorcerer though I am by repute, I
cannot give you that which, were it possible, I would give with
all my heart,--the blessing of physical sight. But may God hear
the last earthly prayer of a dying penitent, and grant you a better
gift and a rarer one than even that of the sight of your outward
eyes, by opening those of your spirit! And may the faculty of that
interior vision be continued to you and yours so long as ye use
it in deeds of mercy and human kindness such as this!"

The speaker laid his hand a, moment on the blind man's forehead,
and his lips moved silently awhile, though Raoul saw it not. The
priest and he remained to the last with the penitent; and when
the grey Christmas morning broke over the whitened plain they left
the little but in which the corpse lay, to apprise the dwellers
in the valley hamlet of the death of the wizard, and to arrange
for his burial. And ever, since that Christmas Eve, said the two
Raouls, their grandfather found himself when the sacred time came
round again, year after year, possessed of a new and extraordinary
power, that of seeing with the inward senses of the spirit whatever
he desired to see, and this as plainly and distinctly, miles distant,
as at his own threshold. The power of interior vision came upon
him in sleep or in trance, precisely as with the prophets and sybils