"To murder."

The other's whole manner changed on the instant. He was no longer the
stern Churchman, the inveterate friend of Justice, the prejudiced priest,
rigid in a pious convention, who could neither bend nor break. The sin
of an infidel breaker of the law, that was one thing; the crime of a son
of the Church, which a human soul came to relate in its agony, that was
another. He had a crass sense of justice, but there was in him a deeper
thing still: the revelation of the human soul, the responsibility of
speaking to the heart which has dropped the folds of secrecy, exposing
the skeleton of truth, grim and staring, to the eye of a secret earthly
mentor.

"If it has been hidden all these years, why do you tell it now, my son?"

"It is the only way."

"Why was it hidden?"

"I have come to confess," answered the man bitterly. The priest looked
at him anxiously. "You have spoken rightly, my son. I am not here to
ask, but to receive."

"Forgive me, but it is my crime I would speak of now. I choose this
moment that another should not suffer for what he did not do."

The priest thought of the man they had left in the little house, and the
crime with which he was charged, and wondered what the sinner before him
was going to say.