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A while went by, I do not know how long, till at length I saw the abbess standing before me, a lantern in her hand, and she was sobbing bitterly. 'All is done, she said. 'Nay, have no fear, the draught worked well. Before ever a stone was laid mother and child slept sound. Alas for her soul who died unrepentant and unshriven!
Duke Robert, you forced her to die unshriven, and you stuck the image of your soul into the image of your body, thinking thereby that, while she suffered the tortures of Hell, you would rest in peace, until your well-scoured little soul might fly straight up to Paradise; you were afraid of Her when both of you should be dead, and thought yourself very clever to have prepared for all emergencies!
Because she was, in fact, mistaken and because the O'Connells shared with the Beekmans and the Ginsbergs a tradition reaching back to a period when revenge was justice, and custom of kinsfolk the only law, Shane O'Connell had sought out Red McGurk and had sent him unshriven to his God.
Remember, one sin withheld at confession will curse you on your death-bed, and send you, unshriven, to perdition!" A sort of shudder ran through the bowed form of Inez, and in a low tone, she replied, "I also accuse myself of all the sins that may have escaped my memory, and by which, as well as those I have confessed, I have offended Almighty God, through my most grievous fault."
Certainly you would go to sleep; but in what a frame of mind! You would enter into sleep with your eyes shut. It would be like dying, not only unshriven, but in the act of guilt. What book shall it shine upon? I cannot. They will not do they are no good to me. I am not writing about you. I know those men I have named are transcendent, the greater lights.
With her left hand she drew upon the fine gold chain about her neck, and brought forth a tiny jewelled cross. Passing the chain over her head, she held it out. "Take this," she bade him. "Take it, I say. Now, with that sacred symbol in your hand, make solemn oath to divulge no word of what you have learnt here tonight, or else resign yourself to an unshriven death.
'Twas Dansowich himself, who thereby but half fulfilled his vow of vengeance against the republic. And when did it occur?" he continued with rising fury. "Was it not shortly after the day in which that heartless villain, the Proveditore Marcello, captured the woivode's wife, and hung her, unoffending and defenceless, unshriven and unabsolved, upon a tree on the Dalmatian shore?"
For her sake he would have tried to steal the ring from the executioner's finger. Now he had gone into the other world unshriven, with the rope about his neck, for though the benefit of the sacrament was usually granted even to the worst criminals, the peasants strung Nickel up to the nearest tree as soon as they caught him, without heeding his entreaties.
"Death a thousand times, though a thousand times undeserved, rather than your foul embrace!" "You have chosen. Your blood be on your own head!" cried the executioner, stamping his foot. "You die unshriven and unblessed!" "At least, abhorred ruffian," cried Magdalena, "I have some little time for preparation! The hour has not yet arrived." "Has it not?" cried the executioner. "Behold yon clock!"
They were living then in the ancient adobe "Governor's palace," with its four-foot walls and its eventful history ante-dating the landing at Plymouth Rock, and for a half-waking instant she wondered if some unshriven victim of century-gone enmity and revenge still walked those old halls or sought its mortal habiliments among the rotting bones in the placita.
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