The tread of feet up the aisle died away. The bier was set at the head of the nave, and lighted candles placed around it. There fell a silence, utter and profound.
Why was it now that his lips scarcely moved, that his voice was scarcely audible; why that sudden foreboding, intangible yet present everywhere, at his temerity, at his unhallowed, hideous perversion of sanctity in that he should pray as a priest of God, in the habiliments of one of God's ministers, in God's church--ay, it was a devil's masquerade, for he, if never before, stood branded now, sealing that blasphemous toast, a disciple of hell.
"'_Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine_....' Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord...."
And so he denied God, did he? And so he was callous and indifferent, and scoffed at the possibility of a church, simply because it was a church, being the abiding place of a higher, holier, omnipotent presence? Why, then, that hoarseness in his throat--why, then, did he not shout his parrot words high to the vaulted roof in triumphant defiance? Why that struggle with his will to finish the prayer?
From the little organ loft in the gallery over the door, floated now the notes of the _Responsory_, and the voices of the choir rolled solemnly through the church:
"'_Libera me, Domine, de morte æterna...._' Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death...."
Death! Eternal death! What was death? There was a dead man there in the casket--dead because he and the man had fought together, and the other had been killed. And he was burying, in a church, as a priest, he, who was the one upon whom the law would set its claws if it but knew, the man that he had killed! It came suddenly, with terrific force, blotting out those wavering candle flames around the coffin, the scene of that night. The wind was howling; that white-scarred face was cheek to cheek with him; they lunged and staggered around that dimly lighted room, he and the man who lay dead there in the coffin. They struggled for the revolver; that old hag circled about them like a swirling hawk--that blinding flash--the acrid smell of powder--the room revolving around and around--and the dead man, who was here in the coffin now, had lain sprawled out there on the floor. He shivered--and cursed himself fiercely the next instant--it seemed as though the casket suddenly opened, and that ugly, venomous, scarred face lifted up and leered at him.