in the under chambers of a chapel. Then he ascended, and my father was
astonished.

He came with a young girl on his arm, as in the ceremony of marriage
sometimes the priest emerges with the bride. The girl was young and of a
Spanish beauty. She was all in white with blossoms in her hair. And
she was radiant, my father said, as in the glory of some happy
contemplation. There was no slave like this on the block in Virginia.
Young girls like this, my father had seen in Havana in the houses of
Spanish Grandees.

"This is Mr. Pendleton, our neighbor," Zindorf said. "He comes to offer
you his felicitations."

The girl made a little formal curtsy.

"When my father returns," she said in a queer, liquid accent, "he will
thank you, Meester Pendleton; just now he is on a journey."

And she gave her hand to Lucian Morrow to kiss, like a lady of the time.
Then Zindorf, mincing his big step, led her out.

And my father stood behind the table in the enclosure of the window,
with his arms folded, and his chin lifted above his great black stock.
I know how my father looked, for I have seen him stand like that before
moving factors in great events, when he intended, at a certain cue, to
enter.

He said that it was at this point that Mr. Lucian Morrow's early comment
on Zindorf seemed, all at once, to discover the nature of this whole
affair. He said that suddenly, with a range of vision like the great
figures in the Pentateuch, he saw how things right and true would work
out backward into abominations, if, by any chance, the virtue of God in
events were displaced!

Zindorf returned, and as he stepped through the door, closing it
behind him, the far-off tolling of the bell, faint, eerie, carried by
a stronger breath of April air, entered through the window. My father
extended his arm toward the distant wood.

"Zindorf," he said, "do you mark the sign?" The man listened.

"What sign?" he said.

"The sign of death!" replied my father.

The man made a deprecating gesture with his hands, "I do not believe in
signs," he said.

My father replied like one corrected by a memory.

"Why, yes," he said, "that is true. I should have remembered that. You
do not believe in signs, Zindorf, since you abandoned the sign of the
cross, and set these coarse patches on your knees to remind you not to
bend them in the sign of submission to the King of Kings."

The intent in the mended clothing was the economy of avarice, but my
father tu