“Sit down, dear friend,” said the rector, when we were alone.  He seated himself on the bed, staring at the ground with eyes that did not see.  Finally he turned toward me where I sat trembling, as if it were my own sentence I was to hear, as in a manner it was.  “I am a great sinner,” he sighed, “God only knows how great.  His punishment crushes me here that I may enter into His mercy hereafter.”

He grew gradually calmer and began: 

“Since my childhood I have been hot-tempered and violent.  I could never endure contradiction, and was always ready to give a blow.  But I have seldom let the sun go down upon my wrath, and I have never borne hatred toward any man.  As a half-grown boy I killed our good, kind watchdog in one of my fits of rage for some trifling offense, and I have never ceased to regret it.  Later, as a student in Leipzig, I let myself be carried away sufficiently to wound seriously my adversary in one of our fencing bouts.  A merciful fate alone saved me from becoming a murderer then.  It is for these earlier sins that I am now being punished, but the punishment falls doubly hard, now that I am an old man, a priest, a servant of the Lord of Peace, and a father!  Ah, that is the deepest wound!” He sprang up and wrung his hands in deep despair.  I would have said something to comfort him, but I could find no words for such sorrow.

When he had controlled himself somewhat he sat down again and continued:  “To you, once my friend and now my judge, I will confess this crime, which it seems beyond a doubt that I have committed, although I am not conscious cf having done so.” (I was startled at this, as I had expected a remorseful confession.) “Listen well to what I shall now tell you.  That I struck the unfortunate man with the spade, that he fell down and then ran away, this is all that I know with full consciousness....  What followed then?  Four witnesses have seen that I fetched the body and buried it in my garden—­and now at last I am forced to believe that it must be true.  These are my reasons for the belief.  Three or four times in my life I have walked in my sleep.  The last time—­it may have been nine or ten years ago—­I was to have held a funeral service on the following day, over the body of a man who had died a sudden and terrible death.  I could not find a suitable text, until suddenly there came to me the words of an old Greek philosopher, ‘Call no man fortunate until his death.’  It was in my mind that the same idea was expressed in different words in the Holy Scriptures.  I sought and sought, but could not find it.  At last I went to bed much fatigued, and slept soundly.  Next morning, when I sat down at my desk, to my great astonishment I saw there a piece of paper, on which was written, ’Call no man happy until his end hath come’ (Sirach xi. 34), and following it was a funeral sermon, short, but as good in construction as any I have ever written.  And all this was in my own handwriting.  It was quite out of the question that anyone could have entered the room during the night, as I had locked it myself, and it had not been opened until I entered next day.  I knew what had happened, as I could remember one or two such occurrences in my life before.