CHAPTER VI. A DEATH-BED REPENTANCE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 18, 22 August 1884, Page 7

CHAPTER VI. A DEATH-BED REPENTANCE.

Brightly and beautifully rose the morning sun on the running stream, which was less darkly tintsd with the ruddy life drops. The most repulsive traces of the conflict had been removed. The wounded creatures had been taken to the impromptu hospital in the church. They were but three in number— a French sergeant, the prisoner with the sabre-cut across his face, and the officer who haa fallen beneath the hawthorn. The good Brothers, with the help of some of the peasants, had dug a trench in which they had buried the dead, and the broken arms and other wrecks of the skirmish had been cleared away. The tops of the pine trees waved gaily in the breeze, and from some of the cottages the smoke, not of a direful conflagration, but of the fire kindled for domestic purposes, curled up to the azure skies. That morning sunbeam, streaming through one of the dismantled windows of the church, shone on the face of one whose eyes would close for ever before it set. It was the Prussian officer, who, aroused by the wild exclamations of the soldier, had mhnaged to make known to Brother Aloysius that he, too, though severely wounded, still lived. Assistance had been procured, and both the soldier and officer had been conveyed to the church. Among the Brethren the science of medicine had its professors. Among these, the most eminent was Brother Albert, and he attended to the wounded men. Of these, the case of the b'rench sergeant was the least severe. The Prussian soldier recovered from his insensibility, and after his arm was set and the wound in his face bound up, befell into a quiet sleep. The condition of the wounded officer was the most perilous — Brother Albert gave no hope that he would survive. His senses wandered ; he was in a high fever, and talked wildly during the night of a woman he had cruelly deceived and a little child perishing in the snow. He said that the woman kept ever beside him wrapped in a winding-sheet of snow, and his question to her was : " Where was the child I— what had she done with the child?" After the midnight hour— that weird hour so critical to the sick or the dying — the violence of bis delirium moderated. Though not sleeping, he closed his eyes, and remained perfectly quiet. When the day had fully broken he looked around, and in a faint voice addressed Brother Aloysius, who was watching beside his bed. " Good Brother !" he said, "you see before you a dying wretch who is unworthy of your charitable care. I am the near kinsman of an opulent Bavarian noble, failing his own children, the heir to his title and his wealth. My career might have been one of happiness and honour, for the Frey Graf was most generous ; his interest was all mine, and his wealth to an extent that would have more than satisfied any reasonable expectation. But I was posses&ed by an inordinate love of pleasure. I chose the broad path that leads unto destruction. I was dissolute and a gamble):. I fiercely envied and hated my generous cousin, and still more did I hate bis innocent heir 1" The unhappy man here paused in his narration, and Brother Albert, who had come to examine into the condition of his patients,

administered to him a cordial, and warned him that his excitement might cause immediate dissolution. " Tell me not, reverend Brother, that I must be calm," replied the Prussian. " Well I know that I stand upon the brink of eternity, and that my eternity is with the souls in heel I" " Nay," said the good Brother, " with the truly penitent even at the last hour may be plentiful redemption." •'No," groaned the officer, "not mercy's self can spare the villain, who led astray a weak and wretched gin by reason of bar love and blind trust in him, though he loved her not, and laughed at the infatuation which made her his willing instrument in a yet bhicker crime I" " Black, indeed, must be the crime which can exceed the betrayal of a simple creature though her love. It is indeed like unto seething the kid in its mother's milk 1" said AJeysius. "Ay 1" said the dying man. " But what say you to prevailing on the girl to steal her nursling, because that nursling was my kinsman's son, and stood between me and a rich inheritance ?" ••Did the kinsman die, then ?" inquired Aloysius. " No," answered the penitent, " but he was supposed to be at the point of death, and though he did not die, he remained crippled for life. But he did not die — he did not die — and I have sinned in vain i I cave instructions to two villains, dire almost as myself, and the child and nurse were hailed out to murder I Ob, meet and fitting retribution ! I bade the ruffians cross the Rhine and in Alsace do the deed of blood ; and lo ! in Alsace the earth drinks up mine own blood!" Then the unhappy sinner broke out into wild aud frenzied lamentations. He refused all consolation, he would not listen to the words of hope or pardon. " See, see !" he exclaimed, " how Charlotte stauds beckoning to me— how she points with her pale hand to a black, deep pit, from the depth of which leap tongues of lurid fire ! She has not the child with her ; his innocent spirit passed at once to heavenly glory !," A deep and hollow voice here broke ih upon the dreadful revelations of the dying man. Aloysius turned dod gercetved tha* the wounded soldier, whose pallet was btit a few feec distant from that of the officer, desired to speak. " Count Ludwig ! " he said eagerly. " Stand aside, reverend Brother ; let him see me ; I must speak to him I" "Who speaks of Ludwiig?" said the wounded officer. "That should be the voice of Caspar, he who, though he shed the blood of an innocent, is less guilty than I who prompted him to the deed. But this is another of the delusions with which the evil one is 1 permitted to torture my last hours. Caspar is gone ; he crossed the broad ocean full two years ago." "Itis no delusion, Herr Count," said the soldier. "It is the living Caspar who speaks to you— Caspar, who is soon to die I I crossed the wild waters and came back. I joined the armies fighting for our Fatherland ; and on me, as on you, falls the judgment of dying in Alsace! Yet were G-ottfrid and I less guilty than- you suppose ; we did not actually kill either the woman or the child ; we gave them a chance of life by setting them adrift in the snow. And the boy lives, Herr Count, I know he lives 1 " "Lives! Oh, happy, blessed news!" cried Count Ludwig, " But where? but how ? Oh, no, it is not true !" "It is," cried Caspar. "Look upon this fair b6y !" and be pointed to Emmanuel. " Behold in him the living image ofi the' good Count Werdendorf in the days ©f his youth. He who searched us all the livelong night, he is Count Rudolph, whom you bade me murder. I know this by a scar on his left hand, the mark of a wound when he fell upon a flint stone in the oastle grounds. Charlotte, poor Charlotte, doubtless piri&hed ; and how the boy is yet in life I know not ; but this I know — he is your kinsman's son, he who stands Vp.Fnre tib 1"