ice of prayer to-day for a soul in deadly
peril, and have been so absorbed therein that I have known nothing that
passed. There is a soul among us, brethren," he added, "that stands at
this moment so near to damnation that even the most blessed Mother of
God is in doubt for its salvation, and whether it can be saved at all
God only knows."

These words, rising up from a tremendous groundswell of repressed
feeling, had a fearful, almost supernatural earnestness that made the
body of the monks tremble. Most of them were conscious of living but a
shabby, shambling, dissembling life, evading in every possible way the
efforts of their Superior to bring them up to the requirements of their
profession; and therefore, when these words were bolted out among them
with such a glowing intensity, every one of them began mentally feeling
for the key of his own private and interior skeleton-closet, and
wondering which of their ghastly occupants was coming to light now.

Father Johannes alone was unmoved, because he had long since ceased to
have a conscience. A throb of moral pulsation had for years been an
impossibility to the dried and hardened fibre of his inner nature. He
was one of those real, genuine, thorough unbelievers in all religion and
all faith and all spirituality, whose unbelief grows only more callous
by the constant handling of sacred things. Ambition was the ruling
motive of his life, and every faculty was sharpened into such
acuteness under its action that his penetration seemed at times almost
preternatural.

While he stood with downcast eyes and hands crossed upon his breast,
listening to the burning words which remorse and despair wrung from his
Superior, he was calmly and warily studying to see what could be made of
the evident interior conflict that convulsed him. Was there some secret
sin? Had that sanctity at last found the temptation that was more than a
match for it? And what could it be?

To a nature with any strong combative force there is no tonic like the
presence of a secret and powerful enemy, and the stealthy glances
of Father Johannes's serpent eye did more towards restoring Father
Francesco to self-mastery than the most conscientious struggles could
have done. He grew calm, resolved, determined. Self-respect was dear to
him,--and dear to him no less that reflection of self-respect which a
man reads in other eyes. He would not forfeit his conventual honor, or
bring a stain on his order, or, lea