Glorious summer weather, gold on sea and land, but gloom of death and on our hearts, and dark forebodings of what the future has in store. I could hardly believe it possible that one night's agony could work such a change in the appearance; but when, next morning, I saw the face of Father Letheby, white and , as if Sorrow had dragged his rack over it, and the dark circles under his eyes, and the mute despair of his mouth, I remembered all that I had ever read of the of hair in one night, and the metamorphoses that follow in the where has driven his plough. It appeared, then, that between the buoyancy of the day's success, and the society of friends, and the little excitements of the evening, he had not realized the extent of his losses and responsibilities. But in the loneliness of midnight it all came back; and he read, in flaming letters on the dark background of his future, the one word: Ruin! And it was not the financial and that he , but the shame that follows defeat, and the secret that many would feel at the toppling over of such airy castles and the destruction of such ambitious hopes. He was young, and life had looked fair before him, holding out all kinds of roseate promises; and now, at one blow, the whole is shattered, and shame and disgrace, indelible as the biting of a burning acid, was his for all the long years of life. It was no use to argue: "You have done nothing wrong or dishonorable"; here was defeat and financial ruin, and no amount of by reason or argument could cover the dread consequences.  
"Come out," I cried, after we had talked and reasoned to no purpose; "sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Let us have a walk; and the sea air will clear the cobwebs off our brains."
 
We strolled down by the sea, which to-day looked so calm and beautiful, its surface with where the sunlight , and the colored plaits of the waves weaving themselves lazily until they broke into the white lace-work of sandy shoals. Nothing was there to show the pitiless capacity or the deep revenge it takes from time to time on its helpless . As we passed down by the , the "Great House" came into sight, all its blinds drawn and the white windows staring blankly at the sea.
 
"This poor child has a heavier cross before her than you," I said.
 
"Yes, but hers shall be healed in time. But who will wipe out dishonor?"
 
"I cannot see where the dishonor comes in," I replied. "You have neither robbed nor ."
 
"I am a hopeless insolvent," he said. "I am security, sole security, for those men over at Kilkeel, whom I promised and guaranteed to safeguard. That I am bound to do on every principle of honor."
 
"Well, looking at it in its worst aspect," I replied, " is not dishonorable—"
 
"It is the very of dishonor in a priest," he said.
 
Then I saw the inutility of reason in such a case.
 
We dined together that evening; and just as the Angelus bell rang, we heard the hootings and shouts of the villagers after the new hands that had been taken on at the factory. In a few minutes these poor girls came to the door to explain that they could not return to work. It was the last straw. For a moment his anger flamed up in a of rage against these whom he had saved from poverty. Then it died down in to what he considered the higher decree.
 
"Never mind, girls," he said; "tell Kate Ginivan to close the room and bring me the key."
 
That was all, except that a certain listener treasured up all this in his heart; and the following Sunday at both Masses, the walls of Kilronan echoed to a torrent of vituperation, an of anger, , and reproach, that made the faces of the congregation redden with shame and whiten with fear, and made the ladies of the fringes and the wish to call unto the hills to cover them and the mountains to hide them.
 
Nothing on earth can convince the villagers that the was an accident and not premeditated.
 
"They saw us coming, and made for us. Sure we had a right to expect it. They wanted to make us drunk at the fishing-fleet; but the cap'n wouldn't lave 'em."
 
"You don't mean to say they dreaded your poor boat?"
 
"Dreaded? They don't want Irishmen anywhere. Sure, 't was only last year, whin they wanted to start a steamer between Galway and Newfoundland—the shortest run to America—the captain was on his first trip, and tho' there isn't nothing but ninety of blue say-wather betune Arran and Salthill, he wint out of his way to find a rock, three miles out av his coorse, and—he found it. The Liverpool min settled Galway."
 
"And didn't the cap'n cry: 'Port! d—n you, port!' and they turned her nose right on us."
 
"But they were kind when they picked you up?"
 
"So far as talking gibberish and pouring whiskey into us, they were; but whin they landed us, one dirty frog-eater sang out:—
 
"It's addiyou, not O revwar!"
 
Just a week after these events, that is, the Wednesday after my great sermon, which is now a respectable , or datemark, at Kilronan, I got the first letter from Bittra. Here it is, brief and pitiful:—
 
Hotel Bristol, Paris, Sunday.
 
. dear Father Dan:—Here we are in the world's capital. The air is so light that you should the heavy atmosphere of Kilronan a hundred times to make it as soft and exhilarating. We ran through London, seeing enough to make one wish to escape it; and we are boulevarding, opera-seeing, picture-gallery-visiting, church-going since. The churches are superb; but—the people! Fancy only two men at Mass at Ste. Clotilde's, and these two leaned against a pillar the whole time, even during the . I had a terrible ; I couldn't help saying all the time: "If Father Dan was here, he'd soon make ye kneel down;" and I fancied you before them, and making them kneel down by one look. But the women are . It's all beautiful; but I wish I were home again! Rex is all kindness; but he's a little shocked at our French customs. "Are these Catholics?" he says, and then is silent. How is dear father? I fear he'll be lonesome without his petite mignonne. Mind, you are hereby invited and commanded to dine every evening with papa, and also Father Letheby. Love to St. Dolores! Tell Mrs. Darcy I inquired for her. What she would make of the cobwebs here!
 
Dear Father Dan,
Always your affectionate child,
Bittra Ormsby.
P. S. Remember you dine with papa every day. No ceremony. He likes to be treated en bon camarade! Isn't that good French?
 
"You never know what a pitiful thing human wisdom is," said Father Letheby, one of these days of , "until you come to test it in sorrow. Now, here's a writer that gives me most intense pleasure when I have been happy; and I say to every sentence he writes: 'How true! How beautiful! What superb analysis of human emotion and feeling!' But now, it's all words, words, words, and the oil of gladness is dried up from their bare and barren . Listen to this:—
 
"'A time will come, must come, when we shall be commanded by mortality not only to cease others, but also ourselves. A time must come, when man, even on earth, shall wipe away most of his tears, were it only from pride. Nature, indeed, draws tears out of the eyes, and sighs out of the breath so quickly, that the wise man can never wholly lay aside the of mourning from his body; but let his soul wear none. For if it is ever a merit to bear a small suffering with cheerfulness, so must the calm and patient endurance of the worst be a merit, and will only differ in being a greater one, as the same reason, which is for the forgiveness of small injuries, is equally valid for the forgiveness of the greatest.... Then let thy spirit be lifted up in pride, and let it the tear, and that for which it falls, saying: "Thou art much too , thou every-day life, for the inconsolableness of an immortal,—thou , misshapen, existence!" Upon this sphere, which is rounded with the ashes of thousands of years, amid the storms of earth, made up of , in this of a dream, it is a disgrace that the sigh should only be dissipated together with the that gives it birth, and that the tear should not perish except with the eye from which it flows.'"
 
"It sounds sweetly and rhythmically," I replied, "but it rests on human pride, which is a poor, sandy foundation. I would rather one verse of the 'Imitation.' But he seems to be a good man and an one."
 
"He apologizes for the defects of philosophy," said Father Letheby. "He says:—
 
"'We must not exact of philosophy that, with one stroke of the pen, it shall reverse the of Rubens, who, with one stroke of his brush, changed a laughing child into a weeping one. It is enough if it change the full mourning of the soul into half-mourning; it is enough if I can say to myself, "I will be content to endure the sorrow that philosophy has left me; without it, it would be greater, and the gnat's bite would be the wasp's sting."'
 
 
"Now, this is a tremendous admission from a philosopher in love with his science. It shows that he cares for truth more than for wisdom—"
 
"Look here, young man, something has brightened you up; this is the first day for the fortnight that you have to turn your thoughts away from the luxury of ."
 
"Ay, indeed," he said, and there was a faint halo around his face. "Three things—work, Dolores, and my weekly hour. I have all my bitterness under the of hard work. I have my first chapter of 'The Cappadocians' ready for the printer. I tell you work is a noble . It was the best thing Carlyle wrote,—that essay on Work. Then this child shames me. She takes her crucifixion so gloriously. And last, but not least, when I pass my hour before the Blessed Sacrament—an hour is a long time, Father Dan, and you think of a lot of things—and when all the philosophy about shame, and defeat, and suffering, and ignominy comes back to me, I assure you I have been angry with myself, and almost myself for being such a coward as to whimper under such a little trial."
 
"Very good! Now, that's common sense. Have you heard from the Board?"
 
"Yes; that's all right. They are going to hold an to try and make that French steamer responsible, as I believe she is, for two reasons: she was going full speed in the fog; and she should have observed the rule of the road, or of the sea, that a steamer is always bound to give way to a sailing . And I am becoming convinced now, from all that I can hear, that it was no accident. I should like to know what took that steamer away from the fleet, and five miles out of her ordinary course. I'm sure the Board will mulct her heavily."
 
"But has the Board over foreign ten or twelve miles from shore?"
 
"That I don't know. I wish Ormsby were home."
 
"So do I, except for the tragedy we'll have to witness with that poor child."
 
"Have you heard lately?"
 
"Not since she wrote from Paris."
 
"Alice had a letter from Florence yesterday. Such a pitiful letter, all about her father. There was a good deal that Alice did not understand,—about Dante, and Savonarola, and the Certosa,—but she said I'd explain it. Clearly she knows nothing as yet."
 
But the revelation was not long delayed, and it came about in this wise. I had a letter—a long letter—from Bittra from Rome, in which she wrote enthusiastically about everything, for she had seen all the sacred places and objects that make Rome so that even Protestants call it home and feel lonely when leaving it. And she had seen the Holy Father, and got for us all,—for her own father, for Daddy Dan, for Dolores, for Father Letheby. "And," she wrote, "I cannot tell you what I felt when I put on the black dress and mantelletta and veil, which are de rigueur when a lady is granted an audience with the Pope. I felt that this should be my costume, not my travelling bridal dress; and I would have continued to wear it but that Rex preferred to see me dressed otherwise. But it is all . The dear old ruins, the awful Coliseum, where Felicitas and Perpetua suffered, as you o............