Alvarez regained his balance, cast one look of hate at the man who had intervened, and cried:
"Ha! it is you, priest, who have come in my way once more! Then go the way of martyrdom!"
Turning his pistol he fired the bullet full into the black-robed chest, and Father Montigny fell dying.
Paul stood still, unable to move. Every muscle in him was paralyzed by this deed which seemed to him not murder alone, but sacrilege. Of all the events of that terrible night this was the worst. But a man behind Paul, retained every faculty, alive and alert. Up rose Shif'less Sol, his honest face ablaze with wrath. His rifle flew to his shoulder, his finger pressed the trigger, and the soul of Don Francisco Alvarez, grandee of Spain, sped to judgment from the darkness and obscurity of the North American wilderness.
"Come back, Paul! Come back!" cried Shif'less Sol, seizing the youth by the shoulder.
"But Father Montigny is dying!" cried Paul, falling upon his knees beside the priest. The tears ran down his cheeks and fell upon the pale face of the dying man.
Paul and Father Montigny, Protestant and Catholic, young man and old, were kindred spirits, and each had felt it from the first. In the soul of each was the same mysticism, the same imaginative quality, the same spiritual eye always looking into the future. It had occurred more than once to the priest that, if he had remained outside the cloth, and had lived as other men lived, he would have wished such a son as Paul.
Now he smiled and opened his eyes as he saw this beloved youth of his later days weeping over him, as he lay in the forest with his death wound. The one face that he wished most to see beside him, as he drew his last breath, was there.
"Paul!" he said, "Paul, my son! Do not weep. It is the fate—in one form or another—of all who travel in these woods—on such missions as mine. I have long expected it—and I have often wondered that it has been delayed so long. I escape, too, the torture—that more than one of my brethren has suffered."
He reached out one hand, and put it lightly upon Paul's bare head. There it lay and Paul felt it grow cold upon him.