“‘Indeed,’ I said; ‘and I was not for knowing that. May I be so bold as to ask whose son, and of what place?’
“But all he said to me was, ‘_I am Judas._’
“Well, I said, to comfort him, ‘Sure, it’s not such a bad name in itself, though I am knowing some which have a more home-like sound.’ But no, it was no good.
“‘I am Judas. And because I sold the Son of God for five pieces of silver …’
“But here I interrupted him and said,--‘Sure, now, Neil--I mean, Judas--it was eight times five.’ Yet the simpleness of his sorrow prevailed, and I listened with the wet in my eyes.
“‘I am Judas. And because I sold the Son of God for five silver shillings, He laid upon me all the nameless black sins of the world. And that is why I am bearing them till the Day of Days.’”
And this was the end of the Sin-Eater; for I will not tell the long story of Aulay Macneill, that gets longer and longer every winter: but only the unchanging close of it.
“A bitter, wild day it was, that day I saw him to see him no more. It was late. The sea was red with the flamin’ light that burned up the air betwixt Iona and all that is west of West. I was on the shore, looking at the sea. The big green waves came in like the chariots in the Holy Book. Well, it was on the black shoulder of one of them, just short of the ton o’ foam that swept above it, that I saw a spar surgin’ by.
“‘What is that?’ I said to myself. And the reason of my wondering was this: I saw that a smaller spar was swung across it. And while I was watching that thing another great billow came in with a roar, and hurled the double spar back, and not so far from me but I might have gripped it. But who would have gripped that thing if he were for seeing what I saw?
“It is Himself knows that what I say is a true thing.
“On that spar was Neil Ross, the Sin-Eater. Naked he was as the day he was born. And he was lashed, too--ay, sure, he was lashed to it by ropes round and round his legs and his waist and his left arm. It was the Cross he was on. I saw that thing with the fear upon me. Ah, poor drifting wreck that he was! _Judas on the Cross_: It was his _eric_!
“But even as I watched, shaking in my limbs, I saw that there was life in him still. The lips were moving, and his right arm was ever for swinging this way and that. ’Twas like an oar, working him off a lee shore: ay, that was what I thought.