l they intercepted the
priest just outside the bedroom door. She touched Father Forbes on the
arm.

"Just to tell you that I am here," she said. The priest nodded with
a grave face, and passed into the other room. In a minute or two the
workmen, Mrs. MacEvoy, and her helper came out, and the door was shut
behind them.

"He is making his confession," explained the young lady. "Stay here for
a minute."

She moved over to where the woman of the house stood, glum-faced and
tearless, and whispered something to her. A confused movement among the
crowd followed, and out of it presently resulted a small table, covered
with a white cloth, and bearing on it two unlighted candles, a basin of
water, and a spoon, which was brought forward and placed in readiness
before the closed door. Some of those nearest this cleared space were
kneeling now, and murmuring a low buzz of prayer to the click of beads
on their rosaries.

The door opened, and Theron saw the priest standing in the doorway with
an uplifted hand. He wore now a surplice, with a purple band over his
shoulders, and on his pale face there shone a tranquil and tender light.

One of the workmen fetched from the stove a brand, lighted the two
candles, and bore the table with its contents into the bedroom. The
young woman plucked Theron's sleeve, and he dumbly followed her into
the chamber of death, making one of the group of a dozen, headed by Mrs.
MacEvoy and her children, which filled the little room, and overflowed
now outward to the street door. He found himself bowing with the others
to receive the sprinkled holy water from the priest's white fingers;
kneeling with the others for the prayers; following in impressed silence
with the others the strange ceremonial by which the priest traced
crosses of holy oil with his thumb upon the eyes, ears, nostrils, lips,
hands, and feet of the dying man, wiping off the oil with a piece
of cotton-batting each time after he had repeated the invocation to
forgiveness for that particular sense. But most of all he was moved by
the rich, novel sound of the Latin as the priest rolled it forth in the
ASPERGES ME, DOMINE, and MISEREATUR VESTRI OMNIPOTENS DEUS, with its
soft Continental vowels and liquid R's. It seemed to him that he had
never really heard Latin before. Then the astonishing young woman with
the red hair declaimed the CONFITEOR, vigorously and with a resonant
distinctness of enunciation. It was a different Latin, harsher an