less and less, and Fanny Meyrick was very frank in her admiration.
"Convert you?" she laughed over her shoulder to me. "He wouldn't take
the trouble to try."

And I believe, indeed, he would not. His strong social nature was
evidently superior to any ambition of his cloth. He would have made a
famous diplomat but for the one quality of devotion that was lacking.
I use the word in its essential, not in its religious sense--devotion
to an idea, the faith in a high purpose.

We had one anxious day of it, and only one. A gale had driven most
of the passengers to the seclusion of their state-rooms, and left
the dinner-table a desert. Alone in the cabin, Father Shamrock, Fanny
Meyrick, a young Russian and myself: I forget a vigilant duenna, the
only woman on board unreconciled to Father Shamrock. She lay prone
on one of the seats, her face rigid and hands clasped in an agony of
terror. She was afraid, she afterward confessed to me, to go to her
state-room: nearness and voices seemed a necessity to her.

When I joined the party, Father Shamrock, as usual, was the narrator.
But he had dropped out of his voice all the gay humor, and was talking
very soberly. Some story he was telling, of which I gathered, as he
went on, that it was of a young lady, a rich and brilliant society
woman. "Shot right through the heart at Chancellorsville, and he
the only brother. They two, orphans, were all that were left of the
family. He was her darling, just two years younger than she.

"I went to see her, and found her in an agony. She had not kissed him
when he left her: some little laughing tiff between them, and she
had expected to see him again before his regiment marched. She threw
herself on her knees and made confession; and then she took a holy
vow: if the saints would grant her once more to behold his body, she
would devote herself hereafter to God's holy Church.

"She gathered all her jewels together in a heap and cast them at my
feet. 'Take them, Father, for the Church: if I find him I shall not
wear them again--or if I do not find him.'

"I went with her to the front of battle, and we found him after a
time. It was a search, but we found his grave, and we brought him home
with us. Poor boy! beyond recognition, except for the ring he wore;
but she gave him the last kiss, and then she was ready to leave the
world. She took the vows as Sister Clara, the holy vows of poverty and
charity."

"But, Father," said Fanny, with a new dep