his whip he added, "Good-by, your reverence.
Gee-up, Sarmany!"

Father Janos still gave no answer, did not even notice what was going on
around him, and the horses were moving on, Mate Billeghi walking beside
them, for they had to go uphill now, and the good man was muttering to
himself something about its being the way of the world, and only natural
that if a chicken grows into a peacock, of course the peacock does not
remember the time when it was a chicken. When he got up to the top of
the hill he turned round and saw the priest still standing in the same
place, and, making one last effort to attract his attention, he shouted:

"Well, I've given you what I was told to, so good-by."

The priest's senses at last returned from the paths in which they had
been wandering, far away, with his mother. In imagination he was
kneeling at her death-bed, and with her last breath she was bidding him
take care of his little sister.

There was no need for it to be written nor to be telegraphed to him;
there were higher forces which communicated the fact to him.

Janos's first impulse was to run after Mate, and ask him to stop and
tell him all about his mother, how she had lived during the last two
years, how she had died, how they had buried her, in fact, everything.
But the cart was a long way off by now, and, besides, his eyes at that
moment caught sight of the basket and its contents, and they took up his
whole attention.

His little sister was still asleep in the basket. The young priest had
never yet seen the child, for he had not been home since his father's
funeral, and she was not born then; so he had only heard of her
existence from his mother's letters, and they were always so short.
Janos went up to the basket and looked at the small rosy face. He found
it bore a strong resemblance to his mother's, and as he looked the face
seemed to grow bigger, and he saw the features of his mother before him;
but the vision only lasted a minute, and the child's face was there
again. If she would only open her eyes! But they were firmly closed, and
the long eyelashes lay like silken fringes on her cheeks.

"And I am to take care of this tiny creature?" thought Janos. "And I
will take care of her. But how am I to do it? I have nothing to live on
myself. What shall I do?"

He did as he always had done until now, when he had been in doubt, and
turned toward the church in order to say a prayer there. The church was
open, and two o