The strong man beat his breast and bowed his head. As he prayed, with unwonted tears in his eyes, he heard the distant silver tinkle that meant the elevation of The Host. He bowed still lower with his hands crossed upon his breast.
For to this rugged and lonely worshipper also, the message was coming that all men are brothers.
"Suscipe, sancte Pater,—hanc immaculatam Hostiam," that was what Anselm was saying down there in the chapel; and He who heard the one offering would not despise the other, a broken and a contrite heart.
And so farewell to Huber.
In a dark place, under the ground, full of filth and rats, Hyla lay dying in the crucet hûs. It is not necessary to say how they had used him.
He was not unconscious, though now and again the brain would fly from the poor maimed body, but the swoon never lasted long.
In the long and awful night, in that black tomb, with no noise but the pattering of the rats, what did he think of?
I think there were two great emotions in his heart. He prayed very earnestly to God, that he might die and be at peace, and he cried a great deal that he could not say good-bye to Gruach. The unmarried cannot know how bitterly a man wants his wife in trouble. Hyla kept sobbing and moaning her name all night.
The second day, though he never knew a day had gone down there, they had but little time to torture him, and after half an hour of unbearable agony he was left alone in silence. No one but an enormously strong man could have lived for half as long.