For we would bring our comrade to the village
That there he may confess ere death; be shriven.”
They confessed; heard mass, consulted fortune-tellers.
But it availed not; so with him, unholpen,
They moved along the road. Was it his burden,
The constant burden of his anxious love
(Or victim he of some one’s evil spell?),
That so they brought him from the Don
Home on a waggon?
God he besought