it this apartment--or department--to suffer. Therein,
as well as in the parlor, there was odor, but of a more epicurean sort,
that explained interestingly the Pere Jerome's rotundity and rosy smile.

In this room, and about this miniature round table, used sometimes to
sit with Pere Jerome two friends to whom he was deeply attached--one,
Evariste Varrillat, a playmate from early childhood, now his brother
in-law; the other, Jean Thompson, a companion from youngest manhood, and
both, like the little priest himself, the regretful rememberers of a
fourth comrade who was a comrade no more. Like Pere Jerome, they had
come, through years, to the thick of life's conflicts,--the priest's
brother-in-law a physician, the other an attorney, and brother-in-law to
the lonely wanderer,--yet they loved to huddle around this small board,
and be boys again in heart while men in mind. Neither one nor another
was leader. In earlier days they had always yielded to him who no longer
met with them a certain chieftainship, and they still thought of him and
talked of him, and, in their conjectures, groped after him, as one of
whom they continued to expect greater things than of themselves.

They sat one day drawn thus close together, sipping and theorizing,
speculating upon the nature of things in an easy, bold, sophomoric way,
the conversation for the most part being in French, the native tongue of
the doctor and priest, and spoken with facility by Jean Thompson the
lawyer, who was half Americain; but running sometimes into English and
sometimes into mild laughter. Mention had been made of the absentee.

Pere Jerome advanced an idea something like this:

"It is impossible for any finite mind to fix the degree of criminality
of any human act or of any human life. The Infinite One alone can know
how much of our sin is chargeable to us, and how much to our brothers or
our fathers. We all participate in one another's sins. There is a
community of responsibility attaching to every misdeed. No human since
Adam--nay, nor Adam himself--ever sinned entirely to himself. And so I
never am called upon to contemplate a crime or a criminal but I feel my
conscience pointing at me as one of the accessories."

"In a word," said Evariste Varrillat, the physician, "you think we are
partly to blame for the omission of many of your Paternosters, eh?"

Father Jerome smiled.

"No; a man cannot plead so in his own defence; our first father tried
that, but the