his
company than by waiting outside alone until they should return from
their devotions. So he seated himself in a corner near the entrance, and
after a brief, jaunty glance at the sunburned, shaggy congregation, made
himself as comfortable as might be. He had not seen a face worth keeping
his eyes open for. The simple choir and simple fold, gathered for
even-song, paid him no attention--a rough American bound for the mines
was but an object of aversion to them.

The Padre, of course, had been instantly aware of the stranger's
presence. To be aware of unaccustomed presences is the sixth sense with
vicars of every creed and heresy; and if the parish is lonely and the
worshipers few and seldom varying, a newcomer will gleam out like a new
book to be read. And a trained priest learns to read keenly the faces of
those who assemble to worship under his guidance. But American vagrants,
with no thoughts save of gold-digging, and an overweening illiterate
jargon for speech, had long ceased to interest this priest, even in his
starvation for company and talk from the outside world; and therefore
after the intoning he sat with his homesick thoughts unchanged, to draw
both pain and enjoyment from the music that he had set to the Dixit
Dominus. He listened to the tender chorus that opens William Tell; and,
as the Latin psalm proceeded, pictures of the past rose between him and
the altar. One after another came these strains he had taken from operas
famous in their day, until at length the Padre was murmuring to some
music seldom long out of his heart--not the Latin verse which the choir
sang, but the original French words:

"Ah, voile man envie,
Voila mon seul desir:
Rendez moi ma patrie,
Ou laissez moi mourir."

Which may be rendered:

But one wish I implore,
One wish is all my cry:
Give back my native land once more,
Give back, or let me die.

Then it happened that his eye fell again upon the stranger near the
door, and he straightway forgot his Dixit Dominus. The face of the young
man was no longer hidden by the slouching position he had at first
taken. "I only noticed his clothes at first," thought the Padre.
Restlessness was plain upon the handsome brow, and violence was in the
mouth; but Padre Ignacio liked the eyes. "He is not saying any prayers,"
he surmised, present