shadows; then at last he spoke:

"'You, Bishop? Thank God!'"

"He made his simple confession. I anointed him and brought him
Viaticum from the tabernacle in the church. Then the eyes went wild
again, and I saw when they opened and looked at me that he had already
turned around, and was again walking through the shadows of the Great
Valley that ends the Long Road.

[Illustration: "Then I learned--old priest and bishop as I was--I
learned my lesson."]

"Through the night we three, the old woman, the boy and myself,
watched him and listened to his wanderings. Then I learned--old priest
and bishop as I was--I learned my lesson. The lips that never spoke a
complaint were moved, but not by his will, to go over the story of two
terrible years. It was a sad story. It began with his great zeal. He
wanted to do so much, but the black discouragement of everything
slowly killed his hopes. He saw the Faith going from his people. He
saw that they were ceasing to care. The town was then, as it is
to-day, McDermott's town, but McDermott had fallen away when his
riches came, and some terrible event, a quarrel with a former priest
who had attended Alta from a distant point, had left McDermott bitter.
He practically drove the pastor from his door. He closed his factory
to the priest's people and one by one they left. Only eighteen
families stayed. The dying priest counted them over in his dreams, and
sobbed as he told of the others who had gone. Then the bigotry that
McDermott's faith had kept concealed broke out under the encouragement
of McDermott's infidelity. The boys of the town flung insults at the
priest as he passed. The people gave little, and that grudgingly. I
could almost feel his pain as he told in his delirium how, day after
day, he had dragged his frail body to church and on the round of
duty. But every now and then, as if the words came naturally to bear
him up, he would say:

"'It's for God's sake. I am nothing. It will all come in His own good
time.'

"Then I knew the spirit that kept him to his work. He went over his
visit to me. How he had hoped, and then how his hopes were dashed to
the ground. Oh, dear Lord, had I known what it all meant to that
sensitive, saintly nature, I would have sold my ring and cross to give
him what he needed. But my words seemed to have broken him and he came
home to die. The night of his return he spent before the altar in his
log church, and, Saints of Heaven, how he prayed! When