police director asked; but as there
were only a few stars visible, it was not easy to find it, but at last
they managed it, and the police director looked about in the
neighborhood of it.

"The position is not a very favorable one for us," he said at last;
"there is nothing here, not even a shrub, behind which we could hide."

But just then the policeman said that he had tried to get into the
sexton's hut through the door or the window, and that at last he had
succeeded in doing so by breaking open a square in a window, which had
been mended with paper, and that he had opened it and obtained
possession of the key, which he brought to the police director.

His plans were very quickly settled. He had the chapel opened and went
in with the young Latitudinarian; then he told the police sergeant to
lock the door behind him and to put the key back where he had found it,
and to shut the window of the sexton's cottage carefully. Lastly, he
made arrangements as to what they were to do, in case anything
unforeseen should occur, whereupon the sergeant and the constable left
the churchyard, and lay down in a ditch at some distance from the gate,
but opposite to it.

Almost as soon as the clock struck half-past eleven, they heard steps
near the chapel, whereupon the police director and the young
Latitudinarian went to the window, in order to watch the beginning of
the exorcism, and as the chapel was in total darkness, they thought that
they should be able to see, without being seen; but matters turned out
differently from what they expected.

Suddenly, the key turned in the lock, and they barely had time to
conceal themselves behind the altar, before two men came in, one of whom
was carrying a dark lantern. One was the young man's father, an elderly
man of the middle class, who seemed very unhappy and depressed, the
other the Jesuit father K----, a tall, thin, big-boned man, with a thin,
bilious face, in which two large gray eyes shone restlessly under their
bushy, black eyebrows. He lit the tapers, which were standing on the
altar, and then began to say a _Requiem Mass_; while the old man knelt
on the altar steps and served him.

When it was over, the Jesuit took the book of the Gospels and the holy
water sprinkler, and went slowly out of the chapel, while the old man
followed him, with the holy water basin in one hand and a taper in the
other. Then the police director left his hiding place, and stooping
down, so as not to