see me.  He said it would be a big letter, with ‘Red Owl’ stamped on it, and that it would be in Mr. Westcott’s box.  And he said I must take the land-warrant out and burn up the letter and the envelope.  And then he said I must give the land-warrant to Albert the next day, and tell him that a man that came up in the stage brought it from Plausaby.  And he said he’d get another and bring it home with him and give it to Westcott, and make it all right.  And that would keep him out of prison, and get Albert away so he couldn’t swear against him in the suit with the fat man, and then he would be able to get me the changeable silk that I wanted so much.  But things went all wrong with him since, and I never got the changeable silk, and he said he would keep Albert out of penitentiary and he didn’t, and Albert told me I musn’t tell anybody about taking it myself, for he couldn’t bear to have me go to prison.  Now, won’t that do?  But don’t you tell Plausaby.  He looks at me sometimes so awfully.  Oh, dear! if I could have told that before, maybe I wouldn’t have died.  It’s been killing me all the time.  Oh, dear! dear!  I wish I was dead, if only I was sure I wouldn’t go to the bad place.”

Isa now acquainted Lurton briefly with the nature of Mrs. Plausaby’s statement, and Lurton knelt by her bedside and turned it into a very solemn and penitent confession to God, and very trustfully prayed for forgiveness, and—­call it the contagion of Lurton’s own faith, if you will—­at any rate, the dying woman felt a sense of relief that the story was told, and a sense of trust and more peace than she had ever known in her life.  Lurton had led her feeble feet into a place of rest.  And he found joy in thinking that, though his ministry to rude lumbermen and hardened convicts might be fruitless, he had at least some gifts that made him a source of strength and consolation to the weak, the remorseful, the bereaved, and the dying.  He stepped out of the door of the sick-chamber, and there, right before him, was Plausaby, his smooth face making a vain endeavor to keep its hold upon itself.  But Lurton saw at once that Plausaby had heard the prayer in which he had framed Mrs. Plausaby’s confession to Isa into a solemn and specific confession to God.  I know no sight more pitiful than that of a man who has worn his face as a mask, when at last the mask is broken and the agony behind reveals itself.  Lurton had a great deal of presence of mind, and if he did not think much of the official and priestly authority of a minister, he had a prophet’s sense of his moral authority.  He looked calmly and steadily into the eyes of Plausaby, Esq., and the hollow sham, who had been unshaken till now, quailed; counterfeit serenity could not hold its head up and look the real in the face.  Had Lurton been abashed or nervous or self-conscious, Plausaby might have assumed an air of indignation at the minister’s meddling.  But Lurton had nothing but a serene sense of having been divinely aided in the performance