"O, vanitas vanitatum!" murmured the priest, yet compassionately. "What is it that passes the love of woman?"
He slipped it quietly within the breast of his habit and then fell prostrate on the sand, faint from pain and loss of blood. Long the two figures lay there in the moonlight while the rising tide lipped the shining sands. The cool water at last restored consciousness to one of the still forms, but though they laved the beautiful face of the other with tender caresses they could not call back the troubled life that had passed into peaceful eternity. Painfully the old priest raised himself upon his hands and looked about him.
"O God!" he murmured, "give me strength to live until I can tell the story. Sister Maria Christina—Isabella that was—thou were brave and thou wert beautiful; thou hast served our Holy Church long and well. If I could only lay thee in some consecrated ground—but soul like to thine makes holy e'en the sea which shall bear thee away. Shriven thou wert, buried thou shalt be."
The man struggled to his knees, clasped his hands before him, and began the burial service of his ancient Church.
"We therefore commit her body into the great deep," he said, "looking for the general resurrection in the last day, and the life of the world to come——"
The water was washing around him ere he finished his mournful task, and with one long look of benison and farewell he rose to his feet and staggered along the road down the beach. Slowly he went, but presently he reached the turn where began the ascent of the mountain. Before he proceeded he halted and looked long toward the flaming, shrieking, ruined town. The flooding tide was in now and the breakers were beating and thundering far across the sands. The body of the abbess was gone.
The old man drew himself up, lifted his trembling hands and prayed; he prayed again for the soul of the woman; he prayed for the young man, that he might learn the truth; he prayed for the beautiful damsel who loved him; he prayed for the people, the hapless people of the doomed town, the helpless, outraged women, the bereft mothers, the tortured men, the murdered children, and as he prayed he called down the curse of God upon those who had wrought such ruin.
"Slay them, O God! Strike and spare not! Cut them off root and branch who have despoiled thy people Israel. They have taken the sword and may they perish by it as was promised of old!"
A gray, grim, gaunt figure, bloodstained, pale, he stood there in that ghastly light, invoking the judgment of God upon Morgan and his men ere he turned away and was lost in the darkness of the mountain.