ell door and went out into the cloister. With down-turned
face he walked along till he came to the chapel, and, reaching his seat,
sank again heavily to his knees.

The lights in the chapel were few enough, for San Lucido was nearly the
poorest monastery in Spain; a few dim candles on the altar threw long
shadows on the pavement, and in the choir their yellow glare lit up
uncouthly the pale faces of the monks. When Brother Jasper stood up, the
taper at his back cast an unnatural light over him, like a halo, making
his great black eyes shine strangely from their deep sockets, while
below them the dark lines and the black shadow of his shaven chin gave
him an unearthly weirdness. He looked like a living corpse standing in
the brown Franciscan cowl--a dead monk doomed for some sin to wander
through the earth till the day, the Day of Judgment; and in the agony of
that weary face one could almost read the terrors of eternal death.

The monks recited the service with their heavy drone, and the sound of
the harsh men's voices ascended to the vault, dragging along the roof.
But Jasper heard not what they said; he rose and knelt as they did; he
uttered the words; he walked out of the church in his turn, and through
the cloister to his cell. And he threw himself on the floor and beat his
head against the hard stones, weeping passionately. And he cried out,--

'What shall I do? What shall I do?'

For Brother Jasper did not believe.

II

Two days before, the monk, standing amid the stunted shrubs on the hill
of San Lucido, had looked out on the arid plain before him. It was all
brown and grey, the desolate ground strewn with huge granite boulders,
treeless; and for the wretched sheep who fed there, thin and scanty
grass; the shepherd, in his tattered cloak, sat on a rock, moodily,
paying no heed to his flock, dully looking at the desert round him.
Brother Jasper gazed at the scene as he had gazed for three years since
he had come to San Lucido, filled with faith and great love for God. In
those days he had thought nothing of the cold waste as his eyes rested
on it; the light of heaven shed a wonderful glow on the scene, and when
at sunset the heavy clouds were piled one above the other, like huge,
fantastic mountains turned into golden fire, when he looked beyond them
and saw the whole sky burning red and then a mass of yellow and gold, he
could imagine that God was sitting there on His throne of fire, with
Christ on His ri