She looked at him pleadingly. “Oh, I will run all the way home. I am never tired—and I should like to see you within sight of the next homestead.”
“I am glad to have you—but we had better go on. We must not lose more time sitting here.”
He made no motion to rise, however, and for a while they sat in silence. Then he asked:
“Did you ever hear of one Sera Ketill, once priest of this parish, many years ago?”
The girl burst into tears, and sat crying quietly. He put no further question, but after a little said quietly:
“Have I hurt you, child? I would not have done that.”
“That—that was his father,” she answered, sobbing. “Did you not know?”
“Yes, I knew,” he answered.
“And they all say unkind things and hate him,” she went on, still sobbing passionately. “He drowned himself because he had been so wicked he couldn’t bear it—all the sorrow that came after. Threw himself over the cliff, they say; he was seen there the night after his father died in the church.
“And he left a will giving all he had to the poor, but they say it was only to make them sorry for the hard things they had said, and pray for his soul. And they never would forgive him, and they say the Evil One has taken him, because the body was never found. Isn’t it cruel! And all that was twenty years ago, and all that time no one has ever thought kindly of him once—only me, and I couldn’t help it. His father.... I don’t know if he ever thinks of him. And yet he must, since it was his father....”