He was dead," answered Aristarchi.
"Do you mean to say that he chanced to find a dead friar lying in the road ?" asked the Georgian.
"How should I know?
I daresay the monk was alive when he met my man, and happened to die a few minutes afterwards--by mere chance.

It was very fortunate, was it not ?" "Yes!" Arisa laughed softly.

"But what did he do?
Why did he take the trouble to dress the monk in his clothes ?" "In order to receive his dying confession, of course.

I thought you would understand! And his dying confession was that he, Michael Pandos, a Greek robber, had killed the man for whose murder I was being hanged that morning.

My man came just in time, for as the friar's head was half shaved, as monks' heads are, he had to shave the rest, as they do for coolness in the south, and he had only his knife with which to do it.
But no one found that out, for he had been a barber, as he had been a monk and most other things.