grew every moment more impenetrable and harder to face.  The whirling flakes circled and danced before his sight, the winding path was well-nigh obliterated, his brain grew dizzy and his feet unsteady, and he felt that without assistance he should never reach his destination in safety.  Blind Raoul, though himself tired, and longing for shelter, listened with sympathy to the priest’s complaint, and answered, “Father, you know well I am hardly a pious son of the Church; but if the penitent dying down yonder needs spiritual consolation from her, Heaven forbid that I should not do my utmost to help you to him!  Sightless though I am, I know my way over these crags as no other man knows it, and the snowstorm which bewilders your eyes so much cannot daze mine.  Come, mount my mule, Hans will go with us, and we three will take you to your journey’s end safe and sound.”

“Son,” answered the priest, “God will reward you for this act of charity.  The penitent to whom I go bears an evil reputation as a sorcerer, and we all know his name well enough in these parts.  He may have some crime on his conscience which he desires to confess before death.  But for your timely help I should not be able to fight my way through this tempest to his door, and he would certainly perish unshriven.”

The fury of the storm increased as darkness came on.  Dense clouds of snow obscured the whole landscape, and rendered sky and mountain alike indistinguishable.  Terror seized the priest; but for the blind man, to whose sight day and night were indifferent, these horrors had no great danger.  He and his dumb friends plodded quietly and slowly on in the accustomed path, and at length, close upon midnight, the valley was safely reached, and the priest ushered 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!”