haracteristics of a worldly man. This thing of being
bullied day after day, as had recently been the rule, generated nothing
to aid in removing a refractory desire from the priest's heart--the
worldly desire to repeat with great increment of force the punch
against Famsworth's lower ribs.

"I order you, sir, to produce that rebel flag," said Farnsworth. "You
will obey forthwith or take the consequences. I am no longer in the
humor to be trifled with. Do you understand?"

"I might be forced to obey you, if I could," said the priest, drawing
his robe about him; "but, as I have often told you, my son, I do not
know where the flag is or who took it. I do not even suspect any person
of taking it. All that I know about it is the simple fact that it is
gone."

Father Beret's manner and voice were very mild, but there must have
been a hint of sturdy defiance somewhere in them. At all events
Farnsworth was exasperated and fell into a white rage. Perhaps it was
the liquor he had been drinking that made him suddenly desperate.

"You canting old fool!" he cried, "don't lie to me any longer; I won't
have it. Don't stand there grinning at me. Get that flag, or I'll make
you."

"What is impossible, my son, is possible to God alone. Apud homines hoc
impossible est, apud Deum autem omnia possibilia sunt."

"None of your Jesuit Latin or logic to me--I am not here to argue, but
to command. Get that flag. Be in a hurry about it, sir."

He whipped out his sword, and in his half drunken eyes there gathered
the dull film of murderous passion.

"Put up your weapon, Captain; you will not attack an unarmed priest.
You are a soldier, and will not dare strike an old, defenceless man."

"But I will strike a black-robed and black-hearted French rebel. Get
that flag, you grinning fool!"

The two men stood facing each other. Father Beret's eyes did not stir
from their direct, fearless gaze. What Farnsworth had called a grin was
a peculiar smile, not of merriment, a grayish flicker and a slight
backward wrinkling of the cheeks. The old man's arms were loosely
crossed upon his sturdy breast.

"Strike if you must," he said very gently, very firmly. "I never yet
have seen the man that could make me afraid." His speech was slightly
sing-song in tone, as it would have been during a prayer or a blessing.

"Get the flag then!" raged Farnsworth, in whose veins the heat of
liquor was aided by an unreasoning choler.

"I cannot," said Father Beret