ater. The priest
would have considered the ideas that I had put into his head, he would
have had time to assimilate them in the interval, and I could generally
tell in the second visit if I should find in him a friend, an enemy, or
an indifferent.

There was something extraordinary in the appearance of Father Madden's
church, a few peasants crouched here and there, and among them I saw
the blind woman that the driver had pointed out on the road. She did
not move during Mass; she knelt or crouched with her shawl drawn over
her head, and it was not until the acolyte rang the communion bell that
she dared to lift herself up. That day she was the only communicant,
and the acolyte did not turn the altar cloth over the rails, he gave
her a little bit of the cloth to hold, and, holding it firmly in her
fingers, she lifted up her blind face, and when the priest placed the
Host on her tongue she sank back overcome.

"This blind woman," I said to myself, "will be the priest's last
parishioner," and I saw the priest saying Mass in a waste church for
the blind woman, everyone else dead or gone.

All her days I said are spent by the cabin fire hearing of people going
to America, her relations, her brothers and sisters had gone, and every
seventh day she is led to hear Mass, to receive the Host, and to sink
back. To-day and to-morrow and the next day will be spent brooding over
her happiness, and in the middle of the week she will begin to look
forward to the seventh day.

The blind woman seemed strangely symbolical and the parish, the priest
too. A short, thick-set man, with a large bald head and a fringe of
reddish hair; his hands were fat and short, the nails were bitten, the
nose was fleshy and the eyes were small, and when he turned towards the
people and said "Pax Vobiscum" there was a note of command in his
voice. The religion he preached was one of fear. His sermon was filled
with flames and gridirons, and ovens and devils with pitchforks, and
his parishioners groaned and shook their heads and beat their breasts.

I did not like Father Madden or his sermon. I remembered that there
were few young people left in his parish, and it seemed waste of time
to appeal to him for help in establishing industries; but it was my
business to seek the co-operation of every priest, and I could not
permit myself such a licence as the passing over of any priest. What
reason could I give? that I did not like his sermon or his bald head?
A