ther at nine o'clock, and when I
brought your mother here for our honeymoon--that first night we, too,
stood and listened to the chimes--and I told her what they said.

"Men drift away from these things," he continued, with something of an
effort. "I have drifted too far. But, Jean, will you always remember
this, that when I am at my best, I come back to the things my mother
taught her boy? If anything should happen, you will remember?"

[Illustration: "If anything should happen, you will remember?"]

She clung to his arm. She had no words. Never again was she to hear
the chimes without that poignant memory of her father begging her to
remember the best--.

"I have been thinking," he said, out of a long silence, "of you and
Derry. I--I want you to marry him, dear, before I go."

"Before you go--Daddy--"

"Yes. Emily says I have no right to stand in the way of your
happiness. And I have no right. And some day, perhaps, oh, my little
Jean, my grandchildren may hear the chimes--"

White and still, she stood with her face upturned to the stars. "Life
is so wonderful, Daddy."

And this time she said it out of a woman's knowledge of what life was
to mean.

They went in, to find that the Connollys had retired. Jean slept in a
great feather-bed. And all the night the chimes in the College tower
struck the hours--

In the morning, Jean went over to the church with Mrs. Connolly. It
was Saturday, and things must be made ready for the services the next
day. Jean had been taught as a child to kneel reverently while Mrs.
Connolly prayed. To sit quietly in a pew while her good friend did the
little offices of the altar.

Jean had always loved to sit there, to wonder about the rows of candles
and the crucifix, to wonder about the Sacred Heart, and St. Agnes with
the lamb, and St. Anthony who found things when you lost them, and St.
Francis in the brown frock with the rope about his waist, and why Mrs.
Connolly never touched any of the sacred vessels with bare hands.

But most of all she had wondered about that benignant figure in the
pale blue garments who stood in a niche, with a light burning at her
feet, and with a baby in her arms.

_Mary_--

Faintly as she gazed upon it on this winter morning, Jean began to
perceive the meaning of that figure. Of late many women had said to
her, "Was my son born for this, to be torn from my arms--to be
butchered?"

Well, Mary's son had been torn from her arms--