"Thir Chrithtopher! help! help! He is taking me from my mother!"
No words answered. From a ghost none were to be looked for; but the steel flashed in air, and when it drew back it left a trail of blood. Ingle felt a quick intolerable pain at his heart, and the arm around Cecil slackened its hold till the child dropped to the ground.
"So you are come to take me to Hell, are you?" he muttered between set teeth, then swayed, reeled, and fell to earth with eyes fixed. Neville stood over him with vengeance in his glance.
"Are you from the charnel-house or from Hell itself?" asked Ingle.
"Is not this enough like Hell?"
"Ah, you have come from Hell, and know what it is like. Did the devil tell you? I meant to thwart Satan himself by confessing just before I died."
"If you have a confession to make, best be quick, for your last hour is come."
"A priest!" he murmured, for years of indifference could not quite obliterate the memory of Pater Nosters lisped at his mother's knee; "or no, a priest would be harder than any, they stick so close by one another."
"If you do indeed desire to free your soul of a confession," said Neville, touched in spite of himself by the look of death on Ingle's face, "speak to me and in the presence of this child whom you have wronged."
"Do you think I could so escape Hell?"