“It is all I know. If I heard anything more, I heard it under the seal of confession and know naught of it.”
Trafford pondered on the story for some time, without speaking. The habits born of his profession held him, warning him to avoid hasty conclusion as well for the man as against him. It was his business to get the truth, not to find a confirmation or refutation of a previously formed opinion.
The priest waited without a sign of impatience. At last Trafford raised his head and said:
“I do not think it could have been done.”
“What?” asked the priest.
“The leap from the boat over the falls.”
“I have been told by eye-witnesses that it has been done,” declared the priest.
“I have seen it done,” Trafford said; “but it was in broad daylight, when the man could see, and determine the exact instant for the leap. The boat was a very long one, so that before it dipped, it had shot far out; the man was extremely powerful, and it was, after all, a mere matter of luck.”
“We do not talk of luck,” the priest said, with a touch of sternness in his tone. “We will leave that. You admit it possible, because it has been done. Your man was extremely strong. This man seems to me such also. Your man had daylight to show him the tossing of the waters about him; the anxious faces peering at him; the vanishing shores, and the coming danger. This man had all his senses active and single to the work before him. The flash of white foam was enough to show him, even in the night, where he was. To that his sight was turned, for there was nothing to distract his full attention. He was leaping for life. Instinct would come to his aid. It was possible for the man you saw. I believe it was possible for this man.”
Suddenly a thought struck Trafford. This priest could not reveal the secrets of the confessional; but neither could he prevent what he had heard in confession affecting his attitude towards this man and his story. He looked the priest full in the face and asked, solemnly, almost sternly: