ction.

Perhaps because I am a priest by instinct, I always discover in myself
the instant need of prayer when confronted by the unusual and the
difficult. I have prayed over seemingly hopeless problems in my time
and I think I have been led to a clear solution of many of them.
Major Cartwright insists that this is merely because I bring desire
and will to bear upon a given point and so release an irresistible
natural force. He says prayer is as much a science as, say,
mathematics--such and such its units, and such and such its fixed
results. Well, maybe so. All I know is that when I beseech aid I think
I receive it.

So I ran over to the church and let myself in. I felt that at least
for a few minutes I must kneel before the altar and implore help for
her who was like my own child to me.

The empty church was quite black save for the sanctuary lamp and the
little red votive lights burning before the statues of the saints and
of our Lady. All these many little lights only cast the veriest ghosts
of brightness upon the darkness, but the white altar was revealed by
the larger glow of the sanctuary lamp. There it shone with a mild and
pure luster, unfailing, calm, steady, burning through the night, the
sign and symbol of that light of Love which cannot fail, but burns and
burns and burns forever and forever before an altar that is the
infinite universe itself.

My little-faith, my ready-to-halt faith, raised its head above the
encompassing waters; the wild turmoil and torment died away: ... after
the earthquake and the fire and the whirlwind, the still small
voice....

Then I, to whom life at best can only be working and waiting, was for
a space able to pray for her to whom life should be "_as the light of
the morning, when the sun riseth, even a clear morning without clouds;
and as the tender grass by clear shining after rain_." I remembered
her as she had first come to me, a little loving child to fill my
empty heart, the poor clay heart that cannot even hold fast to the
love of God but by these frail all-powerful ties of simple human
affection. And when I thought of her now, so young and so sore-beset,
a bird caught in the snare of the fowler, I beat my breast for pity
and for grief. Oh, how should I help her, how!

I turned my head, and there stood St. Stanislaus upon his pedestal,
the memorial lights flickering upon his long robe, his smooth boy's
face, his sheaf of lilies. I regarded him rather absently. Some