though the singers carried
naked swords in their upraised hands; or again, it seems to be the
sullen angry diapason of distant thunder in the hills.

But mostly they sing a paean or lamentation of the cross, heavy with
unspeakable weariness and the ache of unshed tears. Surely this is the
strangest story ever told. It is as though they sing to a dead god in
a dead world.

And, sometimes, sight and sound become blended into one, and the sound
is the sobbing urge of the pines ... the people as they rise and fall
to the floor are the trees swayed by the wind. The cross they are
lifting is wondrous heavy, so that it takes four strong fellows. It is
built of oak beams and the figure of the Nazarene is of bronze. As the
lights fall from the windows on the outstretched body, with its pierced
hands and thorn-stung brow, it seems as though the tragedy of Golgotha
is being re-enacted before my very eyes, here on this far-away edge of
the world. The thing is ghastly in its awful realism, so that I am
crushed and confounded. It falls like flakes of fire on my brain, till
my mind's ear catches again and again that most horrifying cry of the
ages, "My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken me?"

But I cannot tell you more of this story of the Lord Christ who was
crucified, except that in some way it has become a personal thing to
these worshippers, and, maybe, a joyful one. It must be joyful, for,
at last, they hang a garland of flowers over the upright beams of the
cross and from it draw long, long ribbons of scarlet and white and
blue; which the women carry to the ends of the church like floating
streams of light, and between which the men and children stand to sing
_Alleluia_ and _Alleluia_.

I know not why the priest stoops to the ground and touches it with
fingers or his lips. Sometime the little sister from Mon'real will
tell me.

Henry Ryecroft, in his _Secret Papers_, recounts how he used to do this
same thing. "Amid things eternal," he says, "I touch the familiar and
kindly earth." It was in the silent solitude of the night when he
walked through the heart of the land he loved.

I have always desired to see the mysterious sacrifice known as the
elevation of the host, but, now that I am an arm's stretch from the
altar, I do not look but cover my face with my hands. Only I see that
a dull red flames behind the man's ear when he takes the white wafer,
and the veins of his neck swell as if they hurt.

But I l