of the churches rang with a deliberate purpose, to welcome
or rejoice over some event . . . some entry of a king, she
fancied, in a far-off city. Once even, so deep grew her
drowsiness, she fancied herself looking down on some such city,
herself up in the sunlight and air, floating on the cloudy vessel
of her own sleep. . . .

"Pray for us sinners," she murmured, "now and in the hour of our death."

Then she awoke in earnest, and saw the eyes of the patient fixed
intelligently upon her.

"Fetch a priest," he said.

* * * * *

"Father," said the dying man an hour later, "is that all?
Have you finished?"

"Yes, my dear father--thank God!" . . .

"Well; sit down a minute or two. I want to talk to you."

The young priest, sent for nearly an hour ago in haste from the
Cathedral, finished putting up again into his little leather case
the tiny stocks of holy oil with which he had just anointed the
dying man. He had heard his confession . . . he had returned
again to fetch the _Viaticum_ and the oils; and now all was done;
and the old priest was reconciled and at peace. The young man was
still a little tremulous; it was his first reconciliation of a
dying apostate, and it seemed to him a marvellous thing that a
man could come back after so long, and so simply--and an apostate
priest at that! He had heard this man's name before, and heard
his story. . . .

But he was intensely anxious to know what it was that had wrought
the miracle. The sister had told him that until this moment the
patient had steadily refused even the suggestion to send for a
priest. And then, when he had come, there had been no
preliminaries. He had simply slipped on his stole as the sister
went to the door, sat down by the bedside, heard the confession,
and undertaken one or two little acts of restitution on his
penitent's behalf.

He sat down again now and waited.

The man in the bed lay with closed eyes, and an extraordinary
peace rested over him. It was almost impossible to believe, so
white were the reflections of these clean walls, so white the
linen, that there was not a certain interior luminosity that
shone over his features. His chin and lips and jaws were covered
with a week's stubble, his eyelids were sunk in the sockets, and
the temples looked shrunken and hollow; yet there was a clearness
of skin, not yet dusky with the shadow of death, that appeared
almost supernatural to this young man who looked at him.

"The si