tion on the marble beauty before them, when a voice
broke the silence.

"That sounds all right enough, your Reverence, what you've said about
'Our Father' and the brotherhoods, but there's many a man says it that
won't own me for a brother. There's a weak joint somewhere--and no
offence meant."

Some of the men applauded.

Father Honore turned from the screen and faced the men; his eyes
flashed. The audience loved to see him in this mood, for they knew by
experience that he was generally able to meet his adversary, and no odds
given or taken.

"That's you, is it, Szchenetzy?"

"Yes, it's me."

"Do you remember in last month's talk that I showed you the
Dolomites--the curious mountains of the Tyrol?--and in connection with
those the Brenner Pass?"

"Yes."

"Well, something like seven hundred years ago a poor man, a poet and
travelling musician, was riding over that pass and down into that very
region of the Dolomites. He made his living by stopping at the
stronghold-castles of those times and entertaining the powerful of the
earth by singing his poems set to music of his own making. Sometimes he
got a suit of cast-off clothes in payment; sometimes only bed and board
for a time. But he kept on singing his little poems and making more of
them as he grew rich in experience of men and things; for he never grew
rich in gold--money was the last thing they ever gave him. So he
continued long his wandering life, singing his songs in courtyard and
castle hall until they sang their way into the hearts of the men of his
generation. And while he wandered, he gained a wonderful knowledge of
life and its ways among rich and poor, high and low; and, pondering the
things he had seen and the many ways of this world, he said to himself,
that day when he was riding over the Brenner Pass, the same thing that
you have just said--in almost the same words:--'Many a man calls God
"Father" who won't acknowledge me for a brother.'

"I don't know how he reconciled facts--for your fact seems plain
enough--nor do I know how you can reconcile them; but what I do know is
this:--that man, poor in this world's goods, but rich in experience and
in a natural endowment of poetic thought and musical ability, _kept on
making poems, kept on singing them_, despite that fact to which he had
given expression as he fared over the Brenner; despite the fact that a
suit of cast-off clothes was all he got for his entertainment of those
who would not call