is wandered
easily off into domestic digressions of their own. But all the while
their eyes were bent upon the bedroom door; and Theron made out, after
he had grown accustomed to the gloom and the smell, that many of them
were telling their beads even while they kept the muttered conversation
alive. None of them paid any attention to him, or seemed to regard his
presence there as unusual.

Presently he saw enter through the sunlit street doorway a person of
a different class. The bright light shone for a passing instant upon a
fashionable, flowered hat, and upon some remarkably brilliant shade of
red hair beneath it. In another moment there had edged along through the
throng, to almost within touch of him, a tall young woman, the owner of
this hat and wonderful hair. She was clad in light and pleasing spring
attire, and carried a parasol with a long oxidized silver handle of a
quaint pattern. She looked at him, and he saw that her face was of a
lengthened oval, with a luminous rose-tinted skin, full red lips, and
big brown, frank eyes with heavy auburn lashes. She made a grave little
inclination of her head toward him, and he bowed in response. Since her
arrival, he noted, the chattering of the others had entirely ceased.

"I followed the others in, in the hope that I might be of some
assistance," he ventured to explain to her in a low murmur, feeling that
at last here was some one to whom an explanation of his presence in this
Romish house was due. "I hope they won't feel that I have intruded."

She nodded her head as if she quite understood. "They'll take the will
for the deed," she whispered back. "Father Forbes will be here in a
minute. Do you know is it too late?"

Even as she spoke, the outer doorway was darkened by the commanding bulk
of a newcomer's figure. The flash of a silk hat, and the deferential way
in which the assembled neighbors fell back to clear a passage, made his
identity clear. Theron felt his blood tingle in an unaccustomed way
as this priest of a strange church advanced across the room--a
broad-shouldered, portly man of more than middle height, with a shapely,
strong-lined face of almost waxen pallor, and a firm, commanding tread.
He carried in his hands, besides his hat, a small leather-bound case. To
this and to him the women courtesied and bowed their heads as he passed.

"Come with me," whispered the tall girl with the parasol to Theron; and
he found himself pushing along in her wake unti