s with himself and with one another.

The summer was cold and bleak and the tour was all too short. Home
again his mind seemed not to grip as well as usual and he began to
fall asleep during his long hours of work. The doctor was called and
thought very seriously of the state of his heart--that heart which
many years ago another doctor had called too small for his enormous
frame. The thought of a Chesterton whose heart was too small presents
a paradox in his own best manner.

To Edward Macdonald who had missed a message that he was too ill to
be visited, Gilbert talked in his old fashion and promised a poem he
had just thought of for the paper--on St. Martin of Tours. "The point
is that he was a true Distributist. He gave _half_ his cloak to the
beggar."

Soon after this he fell into a sort of reverie from which awaking he
said:

"The issue is now quite clear. It is between light and darkness and
every one must choose his side."

Frances and he had both thought his recovery in 1916 was a miracle.
"I did not dare," said Frances, "to pray for another miracle."

Monsignor Smith anointed him and then Father Vincent arrived in
response to a message from Frances which he thought meant she wanted
him to see Gilbert for the last time. Taken to the sick room he sang
over the dying man the Salve Regina. This hymn to Our Lady is sung in
the Dominican Order over every dying friar and it was surely fitting
for the biographer of St. Thomas and the ardent suppliant of Our Lady:

"Salve Regina, mater misericordiae, vita dulcedo et spes nostra
salve. . . . Et Jesum benedictum fructum ventris tui nobis post hoc
exsilium ostende. . . ."

Gilbert's pen lay on the table beside his bed and Father Vincent
picked it up and kissed it.

It was June 14, 1936, the Sunday within the Octave of Corpus Christi,
the same Feast as his reception into the Church fourteen years
earlier. The Introit for that day's Mass was printed on his Memorial
card, so that, as Father Ignatius Rice noted with a smile, even his
Memorial card had a joke about his size:

The Lord became my protector and he brought me forth into a large
place. He saved me because he was well pleased with me. I will love
thee O Lord my strength. The Lord is my firmament and my refuge and
my deliverer.

To these words from the Mass, Frances added Walter de la Mare's
tribute:

Knight of the Holy Ghost, he goes his way
Wisdom his motley, Truth his loving jest;
The mill