Father Henri found him pale with dark rings under his eyes, and a look that was frozen with grief. It was impossible to tell how the young man was going to speak or behave, whether he was even in his right mind, and whether he would understand what would soon happen to him. Father Henri decided to act solely in accordance with his calling at first, and offer neither consolation nor reprimand.

   "I am now prepared to hear your confession, my son," said Father Henri, sitting down on the hard wooden bed and motioning to Arn to sit beside him.

   "Father, forgive me, for I have sinned," Arn began, but he had to break off to timidly clear his throat, since his ten days of silence had made his voice uncertain. "I have committed the most heinous of sins and have nothing to offer as excuse. I killed two men although I could have merely wounded them instead. I killed two men although I knew that it would be better for my soul if I myself died and met the Lord Jesus without this sin on my back. I am therefore prepared to submit to whatever penance and punishment you impose on me, father. And nothing would seem to me too harsh."

   "Is that all? Nothing else, as long as we're at it?" asked Father Henri in a light tone, regretting at once that he no doubt sounded as if he were mocking the young man's anguish.

   "No . . . that's all . . . I mean, I've had bad thoughts, ill-conceived thoughts, when I tried to place the blame on someone else, but all that is contained in what I have already confessed," said Arn, palpably embarrassed.

   Father Henri felt relieved that Arn was still so lucid that he had control over his speech when responding to such a bewildering question. But now came the momentous part, the grace of God which so often passes human understanding. Father Henri took a deep breath and consulted God one last time before he spoke the two crucial words. Then he waited a moment until he felt that God within him was giving the support that was necessary.

   "Te absolvo, I forgive you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, my son," he said, making the sign of the cross first over Arn and then over himself.

   Arn stared at him as if under a spell, unable to understand what he had heard. Father Henri waited until the meaning of the words had sunk in deep. Then he cleared his throat at great length, this time quite conscious that it was a sign that he would now present his explication.

   "The grace of the Lord is in truth great, but you are now truly free of sin, my son. I have forgiven you as your father confessor and as God's humble servant and with His consent. Let us rejoice over the great thing that has happened, but let us not take it lightly. You shall know that all this time you have spent in solitude consulting with God, I have done the same. And if God may have said something to you that He has not said to me, there may possibly be an intention behind that as well. For we have indeed had to deal with a very difficult matter, the most difficult I have ever encountered as a father confessor. The anguish you have suffered during these days as you offered genuine repentance has been a part of the testing of your soul."

   "But . . . but it . . . it can't be possible . . . murder . . .?" Arn stammered.

   "Stop interrupting me and listen," Father Henri continued firmly, yet he was relieved because Arn seemed to be much more capable of speech than he had feared. "God's good world is twofold in this case, and we have to try to look at the whole. There is a world out there, extra muros, with its sometimes very peculiar laws. According to those laws you are without guilt; so far it is very simple. But we have our own higher world intra muros, and it places considerably higher demands upon us. First, my own sin and that of Brother Guilbert is greater than yours, when it comes to these killings. I shall explain in more detail in a moment. Second, we have to try to see your deed from God's higher perspective, no matter how difficult this may appear to us poor sinful humans. And we must try to understand what God meant. It was not for this deed that He has kept watch over you, you can be assured of that. Your great task in life, whatever it is, still lies before you. But God used the most practical instrument He found available to punish men who had committed a dire sin. Because this is how it was: They had forced a young woman, Gunvor, whom you met for the first time there by the road, to marry a man for whom she felt disgust. And they forced her to do this for the sake of their own desire and their own profit. When she in desperation tried to escape her adverse fate, they were filled with wrath and wanted to kill anyone who crossed their path. Then they lied loudly that the first man they met would be a bride-robber, and according to the laws out there, they would have the pleasure of killing him. When God saw this He grew angry and set you in the path of the sinners in order to punish them as severely as only He can. That cathedral Dean Torkel was thus not entirely wrong when he spoke of how he saw an angel guiding your hand, although all that nonsense about a miracle, et cetera, et cetera, is drivel, of course. You were God's instrument and carried out His judgment, which you might not have been able to do if Brother Guilbert and I had not deceived you. That is why you are now forgiven and without sin, my son. Your fast ends today, but be careful to eat cautiously this evening; it's not good to gulp down food after such a long fast. So. That's all."

   Arn did not reply for a long time, and Father Henri left him to his thoughts. What he had said needed time to put down roots in Arn's mind before they spoke more about that matter or anything else.

   Arn had no difficulties seeing the formal logic in what Father Henri had said. But the basic assumption behind such logic was that every building block rested on absolute truthfulness and humility before God. Otherwise it would be a mere twisting of words. He was ashamed over what he had first thought when he heard those two redemptive words. He thought that Father Henri had temporized in his conviction out of a corrupt love for his son, that he had constructed a special benevolence in this case that would not have applied in other cases. It was wrong to think such things about Father Henri, and Arn realized that it proved he couldn't keep himself free of sin for very many breaths after receiving forgiveness. But this was not the time to begin confessing all over again.

   "So we have reached the question of my own and Brother Guilbert's sin and our share of the guilt for what happened," sighed Father Henri. "Out there in the other world people categorize others and evaluate them differently, as if they all did not have the same soul. It's not like it is with us, where we are worth no more nor less than our brother. People out there weigh a man not according to his soul; their neighbor is not what they see first. They see a thrall or a king, a jarl or a freed slave; they see a man or a woman who either has noble ancestry or does not, much the way you and Brother Guilbert judge horses. That's how it is out there in the other world, unfortunately."