the house without him. He kept calling into the darkness until he
remembered that the Father would be down in his room again soon and
looking for the key where he had left it.

Back in the hall, he reproached himself with his haste, and concluded to
return to the gate. There would be time to do it; the Father was still
far overhead; his "Benedicamus Domino" was passing from corridor to
corridor; and Paul might be coming down the street.

"Paul! Paul!" he cried again, and opening the gate he looked out. But
there was no one on the pavement except a drunken man and a girl, singing
themselves home in the dead waste of the New Year's morning.

Then the truth fell on him like a thundercloud, and he hurried back to
the house for good. By this time the Father was coming down the stairs,
and had reached the landing of the first story. Snatching up from the bed
in the alcove the book which had been lying there all night unregarded,
he crept into the Father's room. He was coming out of it when he came
face to face with the Father himself, who was on the point of going in.

"I have been returning the book you lent me," he said, and then he tried
to steal away in his shame. But the Father held him a while in playful
remonstrance. The hours were not all saved that were stolen from the
night, and his swelled eyes this morning were a testimony to the musty
old maxim. Still, with a book like that, his diligence was not to be
wondered at, and it would be interesting to hear what he thought of it.
He couldn't say as yet. That wasn't to be wondered at either. Somebody
had said that a great book was like a great mountain--not to be seen to
the top while you were still too near to it.

John's duplicity was choking him. His eyes were averted from the Father's
face, for he had lost the power of looking straight at any one, and he
could see the key of the gate still shaking from the hook on which his
nervous fingers had placed it. When he escaped at length, the Father
asked him to ring the bell for Lauds, as Brother Andrew, whose duty it
was, had evidently overslept himself.

John rang the bell, and then took his lamp and some tapers from a shelf
in the hall and went out to the church to light the candles, for that
also was Brother Andrew's duty. As he was crossing the courtyard on his
way back to the house, he passed the Father going to open the gate.

"But what has become of your hat?" said the Father, and then, for the
first time, Joh