r, where your feet would often pass.'" The
priest repeated this final sentence aloud, without being aware of it.

"Those are the last words he ever spoke," said the stranger, "except
bidding good-bye to me."

"You knew him well, then?"

"No; not until after he was hurt. I'm the man he quarrelled with."

The priest looked at the ship that would sail onward this afternoon.
Then a smile of great beauty passed over his face, and he addressed the
stranger. "I thank you," said he. "You will never know what you have
done for me."

"It is nothing," answered the stranger, awkwardly. "He told me you set
great store on a new organ."

Padre Ignazio turned away from the ship and rode back through the
gorge. When he reached the shady place where once he had sat with Gaston
Villere, he dismounted and again sat there, alone by the stream, for
many hours. Long rides and outings had been lately so much his custom,
that no one thought twice of his absence; and when he returned to the
mission in the afternoon, the Indian took his mule, and he went to his
seat in the garden. But it was with another look that he watched the
sea; and presently the sail moved across the blue triangle, and soon it
had rounded the headland. Gaston's first coming was in the padre's
mind; and as the vespers bell began to ring in the cloistered silence, a
fragment of Auber's plaintive tune passed like a sigh across his memory:

[Musical Score Appears Here]

But for the repose of Gaston's soul they sang all that he had taught
them of "Il Trovatore."

Thus it happened that Padre Ignazio never went home, but remained
cheerful master of the desires to do so that sometimes visited him,
until the day came when he was called altogether away from this world,
and "passed beyond these voices, where is peace."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories, by
Owen Wister

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