His arm was tiring. A
doubt crept like a chill into his heart. Then the priest appeared
to add a cubit to his stature and waver strangely in the soft
light. Behind him, low against the sky, a wide winged owl shot
noiselessly across just above the prairie.
The soul of a true priest is double: it is the soul of a saint and
the soul of a worldly man. What is most beautiful in this duality
is the supreme courage with which the saintly spirit attacks the
worldly and so often heroically masters it. In the beginning of
the fight Father Beret let a passion of the earthly body take him
by storm. It was well for Governor Henry Hamilton that the priest
was so wrought upon as to unsettle his nerves, otherwise there
would have been an evil heart impaled midway of Father Beret's
rapier. A little later the saintly spirit began to assert itself,
feebly indeed, but surely. Then it was that Father Beret seemed to
be losing agility for a while as he backstepped away from
Hamilton's increasing energy of assault. In his heart the priest
was saying: "I will not murder him. I must not do that. He
deserves death, but vengeance is not mine. I will disarm him."
Step by step he retreated, playing erratically to make an opening
for a trick he meant to use.
It was singularly loose play, a sort of wavering, shifty,
incomprehensible show of carelessness, that caused Hamilton to
entertain a doubt, which was really a fear, as to what was going
to happen; for, notwithstanding all this neglect of due precaution
on the priest's part, to touch him seemed impossible, miraculously
so, and every plan of attack dissolved into futility in the most
maddening way.
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