"For one year longer go on as you are, then give yourself to justice--one
year from to-day, my son. Is it enough?"

"It is enough."

"Absolvo te!" said the priest.




CHAPTER XXXIII

THE EDGE OF LIFE

Meantime Charley was alone with his problem. The net of circumstances
seemed to have coiled inextricably round him. Once, at a trial in court
in other days, he had said in his ironical way: "One hasn't to fear the
penalties of one's sins, but the damnable accident of discovery."

To try to escape now, or, with the assistance of Jo Portugais,
when en route to Quebec in charge of the constables, and find refuge and
seclusion elsewhere? There was nothing he might ask of Portugais which
he would not do. To escape--and so acknowledge a guilt not his own!
Well, what did it matter! Who mattered? He knew only too well. The
Cure mattered--that good man who had never intruded his piety on him; who
had been from the first a discreet friend, a gentleman,--a Christian
gentleman, if there was such a sort of gentleman apart from all others.
Who mattered? The Seigneur, whom he had never seen before, yet who had
showed that day a brusque sympathy, a gruff belief in him? Who mattered?