every morning and sat in
the same place, on the same chair, wearing away the old stone pillar by
continually leaning against it. He would gaze steadily at every man who
entered the church and looked forward to Sunday with as much impatience
as a schoolboy, for on that day the church was filled with people from
morning till night.

He became very old, growing weaker each day from the dampness of the
church, and his hope oozed away gradually.

He now knew by sight all the people who came to the services; he knew
their hours, their manners, could distinguish their step on the stone
pavement.

His interests had become so contracted that the entrance of a stranger
in the church was for him a great event. One day two ladies came in; one
was old, the other young--a mother and daughter probably. Behind them
came a man who was following them. He bowed to them as they came out,
and after offering them some holy water, he took the arm of the elder
lady.

"That must be the fiance of the younger one," thought the wheelwright.
And until evening he kept trying to recall where he had formerly seen a
young man who resembled this one. But the one he was thinking of must be
an old man by this time, for it seemed as if he had known him down home
in his youth.

The same man frequently came again to walk home with the ladies, and
this vague, distant, familiar resemblance which he could not place
worried the old man so much that he made his wife come with him to see
if she could help his impaired memory.

One evening as it was growing dusk the three strangers entered together.
When they had passed the old man said:

"Well, do you know him?"

His wife anxiously tried to ransack her memory. Suddenly she said in a
low tone:

"Yes--yes--but he is darker, taller, stouter and is dressed like a
gentleman, but, father, all the same, it is your face when you were
young!"

The old man started violently.

It was true. He looked like himself and also like his brother who was
dead, and like his father, whom he remembered while he was yet young.
The old couple were so affected that they could not speak. The three
persons came out and were about to leave the church.

The man touched his finger to the holy water sprinkler. Then the old
man, whose hand was trembling so that he was fairly sprinkling the
ground with holy water, exclaimed:

"Jean!"

The young man stopped and looked at him.

He repeated in a lower tone:

"Jean!"

The two