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Rh wrong than thine forgave the traitor and the murderer, though Judas sold him to the Cross."

Erceldoune gave a movement of impatience, and the muscles of his arm straightened as though by sheer instinct of longing to "deliver from the shoulder."

"Pardon me, holy mother, I am no theologian! But I know this, that if there had been a touch of loyalty and fealty among the eleven left, that scoundrel of Iscariot would not have lived till the morrow to hang himself. If I had been in Galilee, he would have had a lunge of steel through his lungs, and died a traitor's death!" So startling a view of apostolic duty had never penetrated the sacred walls of the convent of Monastica; the whole range of her instruction from the Church had never given her a rule by which to deal with such a novel article of creed, and she sat silent, gazing at him with a wistful bewilderment, wondering what the sainted Remigius had replied when King Clovis gave him a similar answer in the old days of Gaul.

Erceldoune, who felt a sincere gratitude to the aged woman who had showed him a mother's tenderness and care throughout a lengthened peril,