I heard his
poor, dry lips whisper over the prayer once more I bowed my head on
the coverlet and cried as only a child can cry--and I was only a child
at that minute in spite of my white hair and wrinkles. He had offered
a supreme sacrifice--his life. I gleaned from his prayers that his
parents had done him the one favor of keeping up his insurance and
that he had made it over to his church. So he wanted to die at his
post and piteously begged God to take him. For his death he knew would
give Alta a church. He seemed penetrated with the idea that alive he
was useless, but that his death meant the resurrection of Alta. When I
heard that same expression used so often to-day I lived over again the
whole story of that night in the little vestry. All this time he had
been picking the coverlet, and his hands seemed, during the pauses,
to be holding the paten as if he were gathering up the minute
particles from the corporal. At last his hand found mine. He clung to
it, and just an instant his eyes looked at me with reason in them. He
smiled, and murmured, 'It is all right, now, Bishop.' I heard a sob
back of me where the boy stood, and the old woman was praying. He was
trying to speak again, and I caught the words, 'God's sake--I am
nothing--His good time.' Then he was still, just as the morning sun
broke through the windows.

"That minute, Reverend Fathers, began the resurrection of Alta. The
old woman told me how it happened. He was twenty-five miles away
attending one of his missions when the blizzard was at its height.
McDermott fell sick and a telegram was sent for the priest--the last
message before the wires came down. Father Belmond started to drive
through the storm back to Alta. He succeeded in reaching McDermott's
bedside and gave him the last Sacraments. He did not break down
himself until he returned to the vestry, but for twenty-four hours he
tossed in fever before they found him.

"McDermott grew better. He sent for me when he heard I was in town.
The first question he asked was: 'Is he dead?' I told McDermott the
story just as I am telling you. 'God forgive me,' said the sick man,
'that priest died for me. When he came here I ordered him out of my
office, yet when they told him I was sick he drove through the storm
for my sake. He believed in the worth of a soul, and he himself was
the noblest soul that Alta ever had.'

"I said nothing. Somebody better than a mere bishop was talking to
McDermott, and I, His