g and death things--and
uses them always for some beneficent purpose. But in the meantime the
mother dies, and here you and I have been used to save alive a poor
useless devil of a one-legged tramp, probably without his consent and
against his will, because it had to be and we couldn't do anything
else! Now, why? I can't help but wonder!"

We looked down again, the two of us, at the face on the pillow. And I
wondered also, with even greater cause than the doctor; for I had
opened the oilskin package the Poles found, and it had given me
occasion for fear, reflection, and prayer. I was startled and alarmed
beyond words, for it contained tools of a curious and unusual
type,--not such tools as workmen carry abroad in the light of day.

There was no one to whom I might confide that unpleasant discovery. I
simply could not terrify my mother, nor could I in common decency
burden the already overburdened doctor. Nor is our sheriff one to turn
to readily; he is not a man whose intelligence or heart one may
admire, respect, or depend upon. My guest had come to me with empty
pockets and a burglar's kit; a hint of that, and the sheriff had
camped on the Parish House front porch with a Winchester across his
knees and handcuffs jingling in his pockets. No, I couldn't consult
the law.

I had yet a deeper and a better reason for waiting, which I find it
rather hard to set down in cold words. It is this: that as I grow
older I have grown more and more convinced that not fortuitously, not
by chance, never without real and inner purposes, are we allowed to
come vitally into each other's lives. I have walked up the steep sides
of Calvary to find out that when another wayfarer pauses for a space
beside us, it is because one has something to give, the other
something to receive.

So, upon reflection, I took that oilskin package weighted down with
the seven deadly sins over to the church, and hid it under the statue
of St. Stanislaus, whom my Poles love, and before whom they come to
kneel and pray for particular favors. I tilted the saint back upon his
wooden stand, and thrust that package up to where his hands fold over
the sheaf of lilies he carries. St. Stanislaus is a beautiful and most
holy youth. No one would ever suspect _him_ of hiding under his brown
habit a burglar's kit!

When I had done this, and stopped to say three Hail Marys for
guidance, I went back to the little room called my study, where my
books and papers and my bu