beating the air with truth, because others beat it with lies. We
can't help but rejoice when the time comes to breathe the eternal airs,
where nothing but truth can live."

Horace sighed, and fell asleep thinking of Sonia rather than the
delights of eternity. The priest slept as soundly. No protest against
this charming and manly companionship stirred the silence of the room.
The ghosts of the portraits did not disturb the bold cricket of the
window-sill. He chirped proudly, pausing now and then to catch the
breathing of the sleepers, and to interpret their unconscious movings.
The trained and spiritual ear might have caught the faint sighs and
velvet footsteps of long-departed souls, or interpreted them out of the
sighing and whispering of the leaves outside the window, and the tread
of nervous mice in the fireplace. The dawn came and lighted up the faces
of the men, faces rising out of the heavy dark like a revelation of
another world; the veil of melancholy, which Sleep borrows from its
brother Death, resting on the head which Sonia loved, and deepening the
shadows on the serious countenance of the priest. They lay there like
brothers of the same womb, and one might fancy the great mother Eve
stealing in between the two lights of dawn and day to kiss and bless her
just-united children.

When they were parting after breakfast, Monsignor said gayly.

"If at any time you wish to disappear, command me."

"Thanks, but I would rather you had to do the act, that I might see you
carry out your theory. Where do you go now?"

"To tell Tim Hurley's mother he's dead, and thus break her heart," he
replied sadly, "and then to mend it by telling her how like a saint he
died."

"Add to that," said Horace, with a sudden rush of tears, which for his
life he could not explain, "the comfort of a sure support from me for
the rest of her life."

They clasped hands with feeling, and their eyes expressed the same
thought and resolution to meet again.

CHAPTER III.

THE ABYSSES OF PAIN.

Horace Endicott, though not a youth of deep sentiment, had capacities in
that direction. Life so far had been chiefly of the surface for him.
Happiness had hidden the deep and dangerous meanings of things. He was a
child yet in his unconcern for the future, and the child, alone of
mortals, enjoys a foretaste of immortality, in his belief that happiness
is everlasting. The shadow of death clouding the pinched face of Tim
Hurley was his f