“Kill many men, more than these fingers thrice told,” was the reply of Ko Thah Byu, as he stretched out his dark muscular hands.
“And you yet found grace—a murderer found grace!” cried Oscar.
“Sahib, Christ’s blood wash even murderer white,” was the earnest reply; “washed David, who sinned the murderer’s sin. David’s song is Ko Thah Byu’s song, the history of Ko Thah Byu’s life;” and with a fervour that appropriated every word as if it were a spontaneous burst from his own heart, the Karen repeated the first part of the thirty-second psalm, which fell on Oscar with all the force of a new revelation:—Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. While I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. The Karen’s voice dropped, his head drooped; he seemed again to feel the crushing pressure, the wasting thirst of the soul, and was too much occupied with his own memories to notice the effect of his words on his hearer. Then raising his head again, and looking upwards with such a glance as seemed to tell of heaven itself opening before him, Ko Thah Byu went on with the psalm:—I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.
For the first time since, when a boy, he had stood by a mother’s grave, Oscar Coldstream was sobbing!
He started on hearing a step, and turned a few pacesaside, that no one might see his agitation. A Karen had come to call Ko Thah Byu to the hut of a peasant taken suddenly ill. The evangelist hastened to the place, and Oscar was left alone with his thoughts. With his back turned towards the abodes of men, the Englishman strode up and down, and the exclamation burst from his lips, “But for Io, I would tell all, and find peace.”
CHAPTER XXI.
CONFESSION.
“What would Oscar do but for Io? is it Io who keeps him from peace?” A white trembling hand was on Coldstream’s arm, and he turned to meet the wistful, pleading gaze of his wife, whose light footstep he had not heard when she came to seek him. Her husband could not reply.
“O Oscar—my life! there is some terrible secret which you would keep even from me. You have done something—something wrong. This is like a thorn in your conscience; you cannot find peace until it is taken away.” Io unconsciously pressed very tightly the arm which she grasped.
“I cannot take the thorn out of my own breast to plant it in yours,” said her husband.