He stared at it, not seeing the written lines, I think, save as a blurr; and after a long while he leaned forward and laid it on the coals.
"If I am not already foredoomed," he said to me, "what Lana bids me do that I shall do.

It is best, is it not, Loskiel ?" "A clergyman is fitter to reply to you than I." "Do you not think it best that I marry Dolly Glenn ?" "God knows.

It is all too melancholy and too terrible for me to comprehend the right and wrong of it, or how a penitence is best made.
Yet, as you ask me, it seems to me that what she will one day become should claim your duty and your future.

The weakest ever has the strongest claim." "Yes, it-is true.

I stand tonight so fettered to an unborn soul that nothing can unloose me....