from eight to ten shillings a week easily."

"By Jove! That's good. That will be a great help to the poor people."

"Yes; he sends the shirts here, ready and cut for sewing, by the new
system of scientific shirt-making. Then all they have to do is to tack
them together with the machines."

"God bless you!" I said fervently. "You're a wonderful fellow."

I was sorry that I gave him Ormsby's message of warning.

CHAPTER XX

MADONNA MIA

The winter had nearly rolled by, and the sky was opening out its eyelids
wider and wider, and letting in light to man and all his wondrous train
of servitors. It was a cold, steely light indeed, particularly on those
March evenings; and the sunsetting was a dreary, lonesome thing, as the
copper-colored rays rested on hamlet or mountain, or tinged the cold
face of the sea. But it was light, and light is something man craves
for, be it never so pale. Will not one of heaven's delights be to see
the "inaccessible light" in which God--our God--is shrouded, and to
behold one another's faces in the light that streams from the Lamb? And
so, very tempting as my fire is--and I am as much a fire-worshipper as
an Irish Druid or a Peruvian Inca--I always like to go out as the days
are lengthening and the sun is stretching out his compasses to measure
in wider arcs the sky.

This evening, too, I had a little business with Father Letheby. As I
entered his parlor, I carried a tiny slip of printed paper in my hand.

"You'd hardly guess what it is?" I said, holding it from the light.

"A check for a hundred pounds, or my removal!" he exclaimed.

"Neither. Read it!"

I am quite sure it was infinitely more gratifying than the check, to say
nothing of the removal; and I am quite sure the kindly editor, who had
sent me that proof of Father Letheby's first poem, would have been amply
repaid for his charity if he had seen the shades and flushes of delight
and half-alarm that swept like clouds across the face of the young
priest. And it was not all charity, either. The good editor spoke truly
when he declared that the poem was quite original and out of the beaten
track, and would probably attract some attention. I think, next to the
day of his ordination, this was the supreme day in Father Letheby's life
hitherto.

"It was very kind," he said, "very kind indeed. And how am I to thank
you, Father Dan?"

"By keeping steadily at the work I pointed out for you," I replied.
"Now, let me see wha