can do it at
the Basilica of holy St. Peter at Rome. He hath a mortal sin still upon
his conscience."

"Then let him come to me," said the Confessor. "I will deal with him in
a more summary fashion!"

* * * * *

It was the season of pilgrimage, and many were the penitents who availed
themselves of the monks' three days statutory hospitality. These were
seated about the dark church on chairs and stools supplied them by the
sacristans, and on two of the latter John Mortimer and Rollo presently
found themselves, while Brother Hilario went off to the gallery reserved
for novices of his standing. Now and then a woman would steal forward
and add a tall candle to the many thousands which burned upon the altar,
or a man kneel at the screen of golden bars beyond which were the
officiating priests and their silently-moving acolytes.

The church lay behind in deep shadow, only the higher lights shining
here on a man's head, and there on a woman's golden ornament. The Abbot
sat to the right in his episcopal robes, with his mitre on a cushion
beside him. A priest stood by this chair with the crozier in his hand.

The brethren of the Order could be seen in their robes occupying the
stalls allotted to them. There was another organ and choir far down the
church, high to the right of the pillar by which the young men sat. The
presence of this second choir was betrayed by a dim illumination
proceeding from behind the fretted balustrade of the loft.

With the quick sympathy of his nature, Rollo, forgetting his sometime
devotion to his native Presbytery, which indeed was chiefly of the
controversial sort, permitted himself to be carried away by the
magnificent swing of the music, the resonance of the twin organs, now
pouring their thunder forth so as to shake at once the hearers'
diaphragms and the fretted roof of blue and gold above them, now sweet
and lonesome as a bird warbling down in Elie meadows in the noon
silences. Anon Rollo shut his eyes and the Chapel of the Virgin of
Montblanch incontinently vanished. He was among the great Congregation
of all the Faithful, he alone without a wedding garment. The place where
he stood seemed filled with surges of aureate light, but the night lay
banked up without, eager and waiting to envelop him, doomed to be for
ever a faithless wandering son of the great Father. Snatches of his
early devotions came ramblingly back to him, prayers his mother had
taught hi