hat you are so kind to
poor strangers from my kawntree.'

He did not hesitate like a farmer boy, but looked one eagerly in the eye
when he spoke. Everything about him was warm and spontaneous. He said
he would have come to see the Shimerdas before, but he had hired out to
husk corn all the fall, and since winter began he had been going to the
school by the mill, to learn English, along with the little children. He
told me he had a nice 'lady-teacher' and that he liked to go to school.

At dinner grandfather talked to Jelinek more than he usually did to
strangers.

'Will they be much disappointed because we cannot get a priest?' he
asked.

Jelinek looked serious.

'Yes, sir, that is very bad for them. Their father has done a great
sin'--he looked straight at grandfather. 'Our Lord has said that.'

Grandfather seemed to like his frankness.

'We believe that, too, Jelinek. But we believe that Mr. Shimerda's soul
will come to its Creator as well off without a priest. We believe that
Christ is our only intercessor.'

The young man shook his head. 'I know how you think. My teacher at the
school has explain. But I have seen too much. I believe in prayer for
the dead. I have seen too much.'

We asked him what he meant.

He glanced around the table. 'You want I shall tell you? When I was a
little boy like this one, I begin to help the priest at the altar. I
make my first communion very young; what the Church teach seem plain to
me. By 'n' by war-times come, when the Prussians fight us. We have very
many soldiers in camp near my village, and the cholera break out in that
camp, and the men die like flies. All day long our priest go about
there to give the Sacrament to dying men, and I go with him to carry the
vessels with the Holy Sacrament. Everybody that go near that camp catch
the sickness but me and the priest. But we have no sickness, we have
no fear, because we carry that blood and that body of Christ, and it
preserve us.' He paused, looking at grandfather. 'That I know, Mr.
Burden, for it happened to myself. All the soldiers know, too. When
we walk along the road, the old priest and me, we meet all the time
soldiers marching and officers on horse. All those officers, when they
see what I carry under the cloth, pull up their horses and kneel down
on the ground in the road until we pass. So I feel very bad for my
kawntree-man to die without the Sacrament, and to die in a bad way for
his soul, and I feel sad for