ccident to the guard at the edge of the park, when, like a blow
from above, the thought of it struck him.

Trembling with dread anticipation, he had hurried back to the bench,
only to find his fears realized. The book had disappeared! His
frenzied search yielded no hint of its probable mode of removal.
Overcome by a sickening sense of misfortune, he had sunk upon the
bench in despair. But fear again roused him and drove him, slinking
like a hunted beast, from the park--fear that the possessor of the
book, appreciating its contents, but with no thought of returning it,
might be hovering near, with the view of seeing what manner of priest
it could be who would thus carelessly leave such writings as these in
the public parks and within the very shadow of St. Peter's.

But to escape immediate identification as their author did not remove
his danger. Their character was such that, should they fall into
certain hands, his identity must surely be established. Even though
his name did not appear, they abounded in references which could
hardly fail to point to him. But, far worse, they cited names of
personages high in political and ecclesiastical circles in references
which, should they become public, must inevitably set in motion forces
whose far-reaching and disastrous effects he dared not even imagine.

For the notebook contained the soul-history of the man. It was
the _journal intime_ which he had begun as a youth, and continued
and amplified through succeeding years. It was the repository of
his inmost thoughts, the receptacle of his secret convictions.
It held, crystallized in writing, his earliest protests against
the circumstances which were molding his life. It voiced the
subsequent agonized outpourings of his soul when the holy order of
priesthood was conferred upon him. It recorded his views of life,
of religion, of the cosmos. It held in burning words his thoughts
anent the Holy Catholic faith--his sense of its virtues, its
weaknesses, its assumptions, its fallacies. It set forth his
confession of helplessness before circumstances too strong for
his feeble will, and it cited therewith, as partial justification
for his conduct, his tender love for his mother and his firm
intention of keeping forever inviolable his promises to her. It
voiced his passionate prayers for light, and his dim hopes for
the future, while portraying the wreck of a life whose elements
had been too complex for him to sift and classify and co