"God be gracious! You, Wally? you yourself?" cried the old man, staring at her with astonishment.
"Yes--I!"
"But how can you have done it?"
"They let me down by a rope, and I found him fixed between a rock and the trunk of a fir-tree; if the tree had not been there he must have fallen into the torrent, and no one'd ever have seen him alive again."
"Child," cried the old man, "that is a great thing to have done."
"May be so," she answered quietly, almost hardly, "as I'd had him thrown yonder, it was for me to fetch him up again."
"You are right,--that was only fair," said the priest, controlling his emotion with difficulty. "But it is not the less an act of atonement that may take some part of the guilt from your hapless soul."
"That is all nothing," said Wally, shaking her head. "If he dies, it's I that have murdered him."
"That is true, but you gave a life for a life. You risked your own to save his; you have atoned as far as was in your power for the crime you have committed--the issue is in God's hands."
Wally heaved a deep sigh; she could not take in the comfort that lay in the priest's words. "The issue is in God's hand," she repeated out of the depths of her burdened heart.