deliberate gravity, opened the door and stood before them.

"Holy father," said Father Johannes, "the hearts of your sons have
been saddened. A whole day have you withdrawn your presence from our
devotions. We feared you might have fainted, your pious austerities so
often transcend the powers of Nature."

"I grieve to have saddened the hearts of such affectionate sons," said
the Superior, fixing his eye keenly on Father Johannes; "but I have
been performing a peculiar office of prayer to-day for a soul in deadly
peril, and have been so absorbed therein that I have known nothing that
passed. There is a soul among us, brethren," he added, "that stands at
this moment so near to damnation that even the most blessed Mother of
God is in doubt for its salvation, and whether it can be saved at all
God only knows."

These words, rising up from a tremendous groundswell of repressed
feeling, had a fearful, almost supernatural earnestness that made the
body of the monks tremble. Most of them were conscious of living but a
shabby, shambling, dissembling life, evading in every possible way the
efforts of their Superior to bring them up to the requirements of their
profession; and therefore, when these words were bolted out among them
with such a glowing intensity, every one of them began mentally feeling
for the key of his own private and interior skeleton-closet, and
wondering which of their ghastly occupants was coming to light now.

Father Johannes alone was unmoved, because he had long since ceased to
have a conscience. A throb of moral pulsation had for years been an
impossibility to the dried and hardened fibre of his inner nature. He
was one of those real, genuine, thorough unbelievers in all religion and