He was the picture of complete health.  His dark face was pale.  His black hair and sparse beard were untouched by any sign of the passage of years.  There was not an ounce of superfluous flesh under the curiously clerical garments he lived in.

“Why, right away, child,” he said, with simple confidence.  “I’ll just need to wait for a brief ‘freeze-up’ to get through the mud around Sachigo.  Once on the highlands inside there’ll be snow and ice for six weeks or more.  I told Sternford this morning I was ready to pull out.  You see, thanks to you I’ve cheated the folk who reckoned to silence me.  I’m well, and strong, and the boys of the forest are—­needing me.  Every day I remain now I’ll be getting soft under the unfailing kindness of my nurse.”

Nancy poured out the tea.  There were two cups on the tray and the man was swift to notice it.  She smiled up at him.

“Won’t you sit down?” she urged.  “You see, I’ve brought a cup for myself.  I—­I want to have a long talk with you.  I, too, have got to ‘pull my freight.’”

Father Adam obeyed.  His dark eyes were deeply observant as he surveyed the pretty face with its red glory of hair.  That which was passing in his mind found no betrayal.  But his thought had suddenly leapt, and he waited.

Nancy passed him his cup and set the toast within his reach.  Then she pulled up a chair for herself and sat down before the tea tray.

“Yes,” she went on, “that’s why I brought my cup.  I must get away.”  She smiled a little wistfully.  “My imprisonment is over.  Mr. Sternford set me free long ago, but—­well, anyway I’m going now, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

She seemed to find the whole thing an effort.  But as the man’s dark eyes remained regarding her, and no word of his came to help her, she was forced to go on.

“You know my story,” she said.  “You’ve heard it all from Mr. Sternford.  I know that.  You told me so, didn’t you?”

The man inclined his dark head.

“Yes,” he said.  “I know your story—­all of it.”

“Yes.”  The girl’s tea remained untouched.  Suddenly she raised one delicate hand and passed her finger tips across her forehead.  It was a gesture of uncertainty.  Then, quite suddenly, it fell back into her lap, and, in a moment, her hands were tightly clasped.  “Oh, I best tell you at once.  Never, never, never as long as I live can I go back to the Skandinavia.  All the years I’ve been with them I’ve just been lost in a sort of dream world of ambition.  I haven’t seen a thing outside it.  I’ve just been a blind, selfish woman who believed in everybody, and most of all in herself and her selfish aims.  Can you understand?  Will you?  Oh, now I know all it meant.  Now I know the crime of it.  And the horror of the thing I’ve done, and been, has well-nigh broken my heart.  Oh, I’m not really bad, indeed I’m not.  I didn’t know.  I didn’t understand.  I can never forgive myself.  Never, never!  And when I think of the blood that has been shed as the result of my work—­”