solemn Mass. All eyes grew
moist, and sobs burst forth at sight of them.

"If they were only marching for Ireland!" one man cried hoarsely.

"They'll do it yet," said another more hopeful.

Within the cathedral a multitude sat in order, reverently quiet, but
charged with emotion. With burning eyes they watched the soldiers in
front and the priests in the sanctuary, and some beat their breasts in
pain, or writhed with sudden stress of feeling. Arthur felt thrilled by
the power of an emotion but vaguely understood. These exiles were living
over in this moment the scenes which had attended their expulsion from
home and country, as he often repeated the horrid scenes of his own
tragedy. Under the reverence and decorum due to the temple hearts were
bursting with passion and grief. In a little while resignation would
bring them relief and peace.

It was like enchantment for Arthur Dillon. He knew the vested priest for
his faithful friend; but on the altar, in his mystic robes, uplifted,
holding the reverent gaze of these thousands, in an atmosphere clouded
by incense and vocal with pathetic harmonies, the priest seemed as far
away as heaven; he knew in his strength and his weakness the boy beside
him, but this enwrapped attitude, this eloquent, still, unconscious
face, which spoke of thoughts and feelings familiar only to the eye of
God, seemed to lift Louis into another sphere; he knew the people
kneeling about, the headlong, improvident, roystering crowd, but knew
them not in this outpouring of deeper emotions than spring from the
daily chase for bread and pleasure.

A single incident fixed this scene in his mind and heart forever. Just
in front of him sat a young woman with her father, whom she covertly
watched with some anxiety. He was a man of big frame and wasted body,
too nervous to remain quiet a moment, and deeply moved by the pageant,
for he twisted his hands and beat his breast as if in anguish. Once she
touched his arm caressingly. And the face which he turned towards her
was stained with the unwiped tears; but when he stood up at the close of
the Mass to see the regiment march down the grand aisle, his pale face
showed so bitter an agony that Arthur recalled with horror his own
sufferings. The young woman clung to her father until the last soldier
had passed, and the man had sunk into his seat with a half-uttered
groan. No one noticed them, and Arthur as he left with the ladies saw
her patting the father's