s quite still at last in the
deep earth.

Then one who was young stood a little before the rest, a strong, pale
singer, with an angel's voice. And he sang alone to the sky and the
dusty rocks and the solemn grave. He sang the 'Cujus animam gementem
pertransivit gladius' of the Stabat Mater, as none had sung it before
him, nor perhaps has ever sung it since that day--he alone, without
other music.

They came also to the words 'Fac ut animae donetur Paradisi gloria,' and
the word was a name to him who listened silently in their midst.

Besides these they sang also a 'Miserere,' and last of all, 'Requiem
eternam dona eis.'

Then there was silence, and they looked at the still face, as though
asking what they should do. The mysterious eyes met theirs with shadows.
The pale head bent itself in thanks, twice or thrice, but there were no
words.

So they turned and left him there on the hillside, and went back to the
town, awestruck by the vastness of the man's sorrow. And afterwards, for
many years, when any of them heard of a great grief, he shook his head
and said that he and those who had sung with him over a lonely grave in
the mountains, alone knew what a man could feel and yet live.

And Paul Griggs lived through those days, and is still alive. His grief
could not spend itself, but his stern strength took hold of life again,
and he took the child with him and went back to Rome, to work for it
from that time forward, and to shield it from evil if he could, and to
bring it up to be a man, ignorant of what had happened in Subiaco in
those summer days, ignorant of the tie that made it his, to be a man
free from the burden of past fates and sins and broken vows and trampled
faith, and of the death his dead mother had died, having a clean name of
his own, with which there could be no memories of misery and fear and
horror.

He wrote a few short words to Angus Dalrymple, now Lord Redin at last,
to tell him the truth as far as he knew it. The hand that had laboured
so bravely for Gloria could hardly trace the words that told of her
death.

Then, when the summer heat was passed, he took little Walter Crowdie
with him, hiring an Englishwoman to tend the child, and he crossed the
ocean and gave it to certain kinsfolk of his in America, telling them
that it was the child of one who had been very dear to him, that he had
taken it as his own, and would provide for it and take it back when it
should be older. And so he did,