"Ah, thank you, thank you! how generous! How kind! how most un-English!"
"We mean well anyway," grunted the Parson.
"Yes," said the other slowly. "You did her to death: but you did it for the best. That's England to the core!"
The man's white bitterness struck like a sword. It was something new; it was something terrible.
"Drogheda in the name of God!"
"What's done can't be undone," growled the Parson, all the Englishman coming out in him. "I believe we're trying now."
He bent over his fading enemy.
A thousand dim emotions troubled his heart. Words surged up like waves in the fog of his mind and were gone again, unuttered.
"Good-bye," he said at last gruffly, and made a stiff little bob.
A hand sought his.