n American citizen, he worked in town and city, among
high and low, rich and poor, recognizing in his catholicity of outlook
but one human plane: that which may be tested by the spirit level of
human needs. Now, at last, he was priest by conviction, by inner
consecration.

He stood erect; drew a long full breath; squared his shoulders and
looked around him. He noticed for the first time that a Staten Island
ferryboat had moved into the slip near him; that several passengers were
lingering to look at him; that a policeman was pacing behind him, his
eye alert--and he smiled to himself, for he read their thought. He could
not blame them for looking. He had fancied himself alone with the sea
and the night and his thoughts; had lost himself to his present
surroundings in the memory of those years; he had suffered again the old
agony of passion, shame, guilt, while the events of that pregnant,
preparatory period in France, etched deep with acid burnings into his
inmost consciousness, were passing during that half hour in review
before his inner vision. Small wonder he was attracting attention!

He bared his head. A new moon was sinking to the Highlands of the
Navesink. The May night was mild, the sea breeze drawing in with gentle
vigor. He looked northwards up the Hudson, and southwards to the Liberty
beacon, and eastwards to the Sound. "God bless our Land" he murmured;
then, covering his head, bowed courteously to the policeman and took his
way across the Park to the up-town elevated station.

Yes, at last he dared assert it: he was priest by consecration; soul,
heart, mind, body dedicate to the service of God through Humanity. That
service led him always in human ways. A few nights ago he saw the
poster: "The Little Patti". A child then? Thought bridged the abyss of
ocean to the Little Trout. Some rescue work for him here, possibly;
hence his presence in the theatre.

III

That the priest's effort to rescue the child from the artificial life of
the stage had been in a measure successful, was confirmed by the
presence, six months later, of the little girl in the yard of the Orphan
Asylum on ----nd Street.

On an exceptionally dreary afternoon in November, had any one cared to
look over the high board fence that bounds three sides of the Asylum
yard, he might have seen an amazing sight and heard a still more amazing
chorus:

"Little Sally Waters
Sitting in the sun,
Weeping and crying for a young man;