ouse, and had
found Lady Torridon prepared to treat her chaplain with the kind of
respect that she gave to her butler. But the chaplain's position was
secured by now, owing in a large measure to his own tact and
unobtrusiveness, and he went about the house a quiet, sedate figure of
considerable dignity and impressiveness, performing his duties
punctually and keeping his counsel. He had been tutor to both the sons
for a while, to Ralph only for a few months, but to Chris since his
twelfth birthday, and the latter had formed with him a kind of peaceful
confederacy, often looking in on him at unusual hours, always finding
him genial, although very rarely confidential. It was to Mr. Carleton,
too, that Chris owed his first drawings to the mystical life of prayer;
there was a shelf of little books in the corner by the window of the
priest's room, from which he would read to the boy aloud, first
translating them into English as he went, and then, as studies
progressed, reading the Latin as it stood; and that mysteriously
fascinating world in which great souls saw and heard eternal things and
talked familiarly with the Saviour and His Blessed Mother had first
dawned on the boy there. New little books, too, appeared from time to
time, and the volumes had overflowed their original home; and from that
fact Christopher gathered that the priest, though he had left the
external life of Religion, still followed after the elusive spirit that
was its soul.

"But tell me," he said again, as the priest laid the pen down and sat
back in his chair, crossing his buckled feet beneath the cassock; "tell
me, why is it so hard? I am not afraid of the discipline or the food."

"It is the silence," said the priest, looking at him.

"I love silence," said Chris eagerly.

"Yes, you love an hour or two, or there would be no hope of a vocation
for you. But I do not think you will love a year. However, I may be
wrong. But it is the day after day that is difficult. And there is no
relaxation; not even in the infirmary. You will have to learn signs in
your novitiate; that is almost the first exercise."

The priest got up and fetched a little book from the corner cupboard.

"Listen," he said, and then began to read aloud the instructions laid
down for the sign-language of novices; how they were to make a circle in
the air for bread since it was round, a motion of drinking for water,
and so forth.

"You see," he said, "you are not even allowed to