a man who lay next the
German, with his face altogether hidden in a white and
loathsomely suggestive mask; but there was no stir in answer. The
bishop turned inwards and signed over a woman, and again there
was no movement.

"Thou art the Resurrection and the Life," cried the voice
from the pulpit.

"_Thou art the Resurrection and the Life,_" answered the
amphitheatre, as the bishop turned again outwards.

Monsignor heard him sigh with the effort, and with the
consciousness too, perhaps, of who it was that lay here; he
lifted the monstrance; the eyes of the girl opened. As he
signed to left and right she smiled. As he brought the
monstrance back she unclasped her hands and sat up.

(V)

The three priests stood together that evening on the high roof of
a Carmelite priory, on the other side of the river, half a mile
away, yet opposite the grotto, as the German girl came down to
make her thanksgiving.

From where they stood it was impossible to make out a single
detail of that at which they looked. The priory stood on high
ground, itself towering above the crowded roofs that lay between
them and the river; and opposite rose up the masses of the hill
at the foot of which was the sacred place itself.

It resembled to-night a picture all of fire. The churches on the
left were outlined in light, up to the last high line of roof
against the dark starlit sky; and upon the spaces in between lay
the soft glow from the tens of thousands of torches that the
crowds carried beneath. Above the grotto the precipitous face of
the cliff showed black and sombre, except where the zigzag paths
shone out in liquid wandering lines, where the folks stood packed
together, unseeing, yet content to be present. In front, at the
foot, over the lake of fire where the main body of worshippers
stood, glowed softly the cavern where Mary's feet had once
rested, and where her power had lived now far beyond the memory
of the oldest man present.

From this distance few sounds could be heard except the steady
murmur of voices of those countless thousands. It was as the
steady roll of far-off wheels or of the tide coming in over a
rocky beach; and even the sudden roar of welcome and triumph that
announced that the little procession had left the Place was soft
and harmonious. There followed a long pause.

Then, on a sudden, trumpets rang out, clear as silver,
sharpened and reverberated by the rocks from which they
sounded, and like the voic