attended
to his religious duties. They admitted freely that by the light of his
example, their own husbands and sons left much to be desired; and from
this wandered easily off into domestic digressions of their own. But
all the while their eyes were bent upon the bedroom door; and Theron
made out, after he had grown accustomed to the gloom and the smell,
that many of them were telling their beads even while they kept the
muttered conversation alive. None of them paid any attention to him,
or seemed to regard his presence there as unusual.

Presently he saw enter through the sunlit street doorway a person of a
different class. The bright light shone for a passing instant upon a
fashionable, flowered hat, and upon some remarkably brilliant shade of
red hair beneath it. In another moment there had edged along through
the throng, to almost within touch of him, a tall young woman, the
owner of this hat and wonderful hair. She was clad in light and
pleasing spring attire, and carried a parasol with a long oxidized
silver handle of a quaint pattern. She looked at him, and he saw that
her face was of a lengthened oval, with a luminous rose-tinted skin,
full red lips, and big brown, frank eyes with heavy auburn lashes. She
made a grave little inclination of her head toward him, and he bowed
in response. Since her arrival, he noted, the chattering of the others
had entirely ceased.

"I followed the others in, in the hope that I might be of some
assistance," he ventured to explain to her in a low murmur, feeling
that at last here was some one to whom an explanation of his presence
in this Romish house was due. "I hope they won't feel that I have
intruded."

She nodded her head as if she quite understood.

"They'll take the will for the deed," she whispered back. "Father
Forbes will be here in a minute. Do you know, is it too late?"

Even as she spoke, the outer doorway was darkened by the commanding
bulk of a new-comer's figure. The flash of a silk hat, and the
deferential way in which the assembled neighbors fell back to clear a
passage, made his identity clear. Theron felt his blood tingle in an
unaccustomed way as this priest of a strange Church advanced across
the room,--a broad-shouldered, portly man of more than middle height,
with a shapely, strong-lined face of almost waxen pallor, and a firm,
commanding tread. He carried in his hands, besides his hat, a small
leather-bound case. To this and to him the women curtsie