"Because I shall meet with Spurling, and then I shall hear God's question and His accusing voice."
The priest laid a hand upon his shoulder gently. "Ah, my child, but you forget," he said; "in the country where Spurling has gone he will have learnt how to understand."
That thought was new to Granger, that of the two faults his own was the greater and that forgiveness belonged to Spurling. He sat motionless for a long time arguing it out; he wanted to be exactly just to both Spurling and himself. The fire died down and Père Antoine threw on more brushwood; the sun grew tall in the heavens and a rain cloud gathered in the west; the floe-ice caught in its passage round the bend, gasped and whined and, tearing itself free again, vanished down river out of sight. The arithmetic of the problem stood thus: Spurling's sin had been the result of a sudden violence, his own of a conscious and premeditated uncharitableness. Which sin was morally the worse, to shoot a fellow creature in a fit of passionate desperation, or to turn your back upon a bygone benefactor who comes to you in distress, comes to you when his heart is breaking, because he can trust himself with no one else? "My sin is the greater," Granger told himself, "I am more wrongful than wronged against"; his thoughts going back to what le Père had said, he added, "I am Cain, and yet I judged Spurling as if I had been God Himself."
He was roused from his meditation by a dull thudding sound which had commenced behind his back; turning his head, he saw that Père Antoine was already digging a grave. Rising without a word, he began to lend a hand. They had not gone far when they found that the ground was hard as granite, that it had not yet thawed out; then they commenced to look for stones to pile upon the body so that, since the grave would be shallow, they might raise a mound above it to prevent the wolves from getting the body out.
By the time they had completed their preparations the rain was falling in large and heavy drops, and the storm was blowing in great gusts through the forest, causing the young leaves to shudder and whisper together, and to turn their backs to the wind. The priest and the trader stood upright from their work and gazed at one another. Already the narrow hole, which they had scooped out, was filling with water; there was no time to lose; yet neither seemed inclined to hurry. At last Père Antoine said, "So you are sure that you did not do it?"