votion to the Holy Souls. He told
me once, when we were talking about holy things, that he makes a
_memento_ in every Mass of the most neglected and abandoned priest in
purgatory; but, sure, priests don't go to purgatory, Father Dan, do
they?"

"Well, my dear, I cannot answer you in general terms; but there's one
that will be certainly there before many years; and unless you and
Father Letheby and Bittra pull him out by your prayers, I'm
afraid--But continue what you were saying."

"He makes a _memento_, he said, for the most abandoned priest, and for
the soul that is next to be released. And whenever he has not a special
intention, he always gives his Mass to our Blessed Lady for that soul.
Now, I think, that's very nice. Just imagine that poor soul waiting
inside the big barred gates, and the angel probably her warder for many
years, outside. They don't exchange a word. They are only waiting,
waiting. Far within are the myriads of Holy Souls, praying, suffering,
loving, hoping. There is a noise as of a million birds, fluttering their
wings above the sea. But here at the gate is silence, silence. She dares
not ask: When?--because the angel does not know. Now and again he
looks at her and smiles, and she is praying softly to herself. Suddenly
there is a great light in the darkness overhead, and then there is a
dawn on the night of purgatory; for a great spirit is coming down
swiftly, swiftly, on wings of light, until he reaches the prison-house.
Then he hands the warder-angel a letter from the Queen of Heaven; and in
a moment, back swing the gates, and in plunges the guardian angel, and
wraps up that expectant soul in his strong wings, and up, up, up,
through starry night and sunny day they go, until they come into the
singing heavens; and up along the great avenues of smiling angels, until
at last the angel lays down that soul gently at the feet of Mary. And
all this was done by a quiet priest in a remote, whitewashed chapel,
here by the Atlantic, and there was no one with him but the little boy
who rang the bell."

I had been listening to this rhapsody with the greatest admiration, when
just then Bittra came in. She has got over the most acute period of her
grief, "except when," she says, "she looks at the sea and thinks of what
is there."

"Alice is prophesying," I said; "she is going to take Father Letheby out
of his purgatory on Monday."

"Ah, no, Daddy Dan, that's not fair. But I think he will be relieved
f