? Our holy ordinances have
done their divine work; the last rites of the Church have soothed and
consecrated the heart of Brother Luke, and an hour ago, extreme unction
was administered. Follow me."

"He knows that I am coming?" asked Beryl, raising her white,
tear-drenched face from her husband's shoulder.

"He knows; and holds death back to see you. His self-imposed penance
makes him steadfastly refuse the comparative comfort of our meagre
infirmary, and it is his wish to die, where he has spent so many nights
in penitential prayer. For several days, the paralysis of years has
been gradually loosening its fetters, and this morning, the distressing
and ghastly distortion of one side of his face almost disappeared.
Though his voice is well nigh gone, it returns fitfully, and his
strength seems supernatural. Fearing that you might not arrive in time,
I have written down his last confession, and here commit it to you."

He placed a roll of paper in her hand, and drawing his cowl over his
head, led them up an easy stairway cut in the stone, to a second
terrace four feet wide, that projected as a roof beyond the lower tier
of cells.

A hundred feet below lay the lakelet, shining as a mirror; to the
southeast stretched a valley bounded by buttes crowned with cedar, and
in the undulating field, locked from fierce winds, cattle and goats
sunned themselves, where in summer time grain waved, fruit ripened, and
bees hummed.

From the parapet of a low wall facing west, rose a round tower heavily
buttressed, where swung the bell; and through an open arch in the side,
under the uplifted cross, the eye swept on and on, over a world of
snowy peaks, dark canons, mountain minarets girding the northern
horizon; and far, far away a scintillating thread of white fire marked
where the Pacific smiled behind the fiords that channelled the
rock-ribbed coast.

In that still, cold and brilliant atmosphere, how dazzling the snow
blink, how sharp the outline of projected shadows, how close the
bending heavens seemed; but to the yearning soul of Beryl, the silent,
solemn sublimity of the mighty panorama made no appeal.

Through slowly dripping tears she saw only the spectral flitting of her
mother's sad face, as in their last interview she had committed the
soul of the son to the guardianship of the daughter.

The monk paused, and pointed to the third cell from the spot where he
stood.

"It is but a step farther. Yonder, where the skull