The service had begun. It was like a pageant, an
opera. The organ was pouring a solemn chant through the far arches,
like fall winds among the trees. There was a flute-like gush of music,
far off and mysterious, like birds. It came from the boy-choristers.
Priests in glittering garments were kneeling before the cupola-crowned
altar; there rose a cloud of incense from silver censers, and the
organ thundered again, like the storm gathering over the woods. At the
side of the altar stood the archiepiscopal throne, half in shadow amid
the tall lights, red and gold; amid the piles of barbaric splendor,
canopies, carvings, emblems.

"We visited the chapels on the following day. In one of them a Latin
inscription tells the visitor,--

"'HERE REPOSE THE THREE BODIES OF THE HOLY MAGI.'

"The guide said,--

"'This is the tomb of the Three Kings of Cologne.'

"'The Wise Men of the East who came to worship at the cradle at
Bethlehem.'

"'Ask him how he _got_ them,' said Willie.

"'The Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, recovered them and sent
them to Milan. When Frederick Barbarossa took the city of Milan, he
received them among the spoils and sent them to Cologne. The names of
the Magi were Gaspar, Melchior, Balthazar.'

"'Do you believe the legend?' asked Willie.

"'I do not know; we shall find things harder than this to believe, I
fancy, as we go on.'

"And we did.

[Illustration: ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH, COLOGNE.]

"Leaving the tomb,--a pile of jewels,--we went out, and near the
outskirts of the city found the famous Church of Skulls,--a gilded
ossuary, associated with a mediaeval legend. It was full of cabinets of
bones, said to be those of eleven thousand virgins slain for their
faith by the Huns.

"Here we were shown--

"_A part of the rod with which the Saviour was scourged._

"_A thorn from the crown of thorns,--the Spicula._

"_The pitcher in which Jesus turned water into wine._

"'The Mediaeval Church,' said our English-speaking guide, who had
little faith in the genuineness of the relics, 'has exhibited some
relics from time to time that would repay a long and arduous
pilgrimage if they were what they purported to be; as, for instance, a
feather of the angel Gabriel, the snout of a seraph, a ray from the
star of Bethlehem, _two_ skulls of the same saint,--one taken when the
departed saint was somewhat younger, as flippantly explained to an
astonished tourist, who found in two cities the same co