eed me, you know. It need be no secret."

Percy drew a long trembling breath.

"Eminence," he began piteously.

The other lifted a thin old hand.

"I understand all that," he said softly. "You wish to die, is it not
so?--and be at peace. There are many who wish that. But we must suffer
first. _Et pati et mori_. Father Franklin, there must be no faltering."

There was a long silence.

The news was too stunning to convey anything to the priest but a sense
of horrible shock. The thought had simply never entered his mind that
he, a man under forty, should be considered eligible to succeed this
wise, patient old prelate. As for the honour--Percy was past that now,
even had he thought of it. There was but one view before him--of a long
and intolerable journey, on a road that went uphill, to be traversed
with a burden on his shoulders that he could not support.

Yet he recognised its inevitability. The fact was announced to him as
indisputable; it was to be; there was nothing to be said. But it was as
if one more gulf had opened, and he stared into it with a dull, sick
horror, incapable of expression.

The Cardinal first broke the silence.

"Father Franklin," he said, "I have seen to-day a picture of
Felsenburgh. Do you know whom I at first took it for?"

Percy smiled listlessly.

"Yes, father, I took it for you. Now, what do you make of that?"

"I don't understand, Eminence."

"Why---" He broke off, suddenly changing the subject.

"There was a murder in the City to-day," he said. "A Catholic stabbed a
blasphemer."

Percy glanced at him again.

"Oh! yes; he has not attempted to escape," went on the old man. "He is
in gaol."

"And---"

"He will be executed. The trial will begin to-morrow.... It is sad
enough. It is the first murder for eight months."

The irony of the position was evident enough to Percy as he sat
listening to the deepening silence outside in the starlit night. Here
was this poor city pretending that nothing was the matter, quietly
administering its derided justice; and there, outside, were the forces
gathering that would put an end to all. His enthusiasm seemed dead.
There was no thrill from the thought of the splendid disregard of
material facts of which this was one tiny instance, none of despairing
courage or drunken recklessness. He felt like one who watches a fly
washing his face on the cylinder of an engine--the huge steel slides
along bearing the tiny life towards enormous death