ick at that at first, I'll allow.
What I wanted t' do was t' build a first-class new church, with a
rattlin' tall steeple, an' steam heat, an' electric lights, an' an organ
big enough t' bust the roof off every time she was played. But th' Padre
was as keen as th' Professor, a'most, for old-fashioned things; an' so I
guess we've done that job just about as he'd 'a' done it himself. It
makes me feel queer, though, puttin' up money on a Catholic church that
way; an' when I was tellin' an old aunt o' mine, down t' Milton, about
it, she just riz up an' rared. An' she didn't feel a bit better when I
told her that if I thought it ud please th' Padre t' have me do it, I'd
go smack off t' Rome an' shake hands with th' Pope. And I truly would do
that very same thing," Young continued, earnestly, while his voice
trembled a little, "for this side o' heaven I never expect t' meet
anybody that's so near t' bein' a first-class angel as th' Padre was.
An' when I think how he saved our mis'rable lives for us, as he surely
did, by givin' away his own--that was worth more'n all of ours put
together, an' ten times over--I don't care a continental what his
religious politics was; an' I'll punch th' head of anybody who don't say
that he was th' pluckiest an' th' best man that ever lived!"

Pablo had caught the word Padre in Young's talk, and as the lad looked
up from the corner in which he was sitting, I saw that his eyes were
full of tears; Rayburn's eyes also had an odd glistening look about them
as he turned away suddenly, and emptied the ashes from his pipe into the
fire; and I know that I could not see very clearly just then, as very
tender, yet very poignant memories surged suddenly into my heart.

And when the others left me--as they did presently, for we could not
fall again into commonplace talk--I bade Pablo be off to bed, and so sat
there for a while alone. What I had planned to do that night was to
revise an address that I was shortly to deliver before the Archaeological
Institute; but the pen that I had taken into my hand lay idle there,
while my thoughts went backward through the channels of the past.

In that still season of darkness I seemed to live again through all the
time that Fray Antonio and I had been together--from the moment when I
first caught sight of him, as he knelt before the crucifix in the
sacristy, to my last sad look at the dead body whence his soul had sped
back again to God.

As my thoughts dwelt upon