IN THE LIBRARY BEFORE THE OPEN FIRE
Rayburn and I laughed a little at this odd method for benefiting humanity that Young had got hold of; and then Rayburn's face grew grave as he said: "Well, we're doing a little good, I suppose, in putting that old church in Morelia in good shape. I'm glad you thought of that, Professor. I don't suppose that anything we could have done would have pleased the Padre more than to have that church, that he loved so much, made as handsome as money can make it all the way through."
"Yes," Young added, "an' I guess th' Professor's head was level in havin' all th' new stuff that we've put in it made t' look like 't was about two hundred years old. I did kick at that at first, I'll allow. What I wanted t' do was t' build a first-class new church, with a rattlin' tall steeple, an' steam heat, an' electric lights, an' an organ big enough t' bust the roof off every time she was played. But th' Padre was as keen as th' Professor, a'most, for old-fashioned things; an' so I guess we've done that job just about as he'd 'a' done it himself. It makes me feel queer, though, puttin' up money on a Catholic church that way; an' when I was tellin' an old aunt o' mine, down t' Milton, about it, she just riz up an' rared. An' she didn't feel a bit better when I told her that if I thought it ud please th' Padre t' have me do it, I'd go smack off t' Rome an' shake hands with th' Pope. And I truly would do that very same thing," Young continued, earnestly, while his voice trembled a little, "for this side o' heaven I never expect t' meet anybody that's so near t' bein' a first-class angel as th' Padre was. An' when I think how he saved our mis'rable lives for us, as he surely did, by givin' away his own—that was worth more'n all of ours put together, an' ten times over—I don't care a continental what his religious politics was; an' I'll punch th' head of anybody who don't say that he was th' pluckiest an' th' best man that ever lived!"
Pablo had caught the word Padre in Young's talk, and as the lad looked up from the corner in which he was sitting, I saw that his eyes were full of tears; Rayburn's eyes also had an odd glistening look about them as he turned away suddenly, and emptied the ashes from his pipe into the fire; and I know that I could not see very clearly just then, as very tender, yet very poignant memories surged suddenly into my heart.
And when the others left me—as they did presently, for we could not fall again into commonplace talk—I bade Pablo be off to bed, and so sat there for a while alone. What I had planned to do that night was to revise an address that I was shortly to deliver before the Archæological Institute; but the pen that I had taken into my hand lay idle there, while my thoughts went backward through the channels of the past.
In that still season of darkness I seemed to live again through all the time that Fray Antonio and I had been together—from the moment when I first caught sight of him, as he knelt before the crucifix in the sacristy, to my last sad look at the dead body whence his soul had sped back again to God.
As my thoughts dwelt upon this most loving and most tender companionship, the like of which for perfectness I am confident was never known, and then upon the cruel violence that brought it to an end, so searching a pain went through my soul that I knew that either it must cease or I must die of it in a very little while. And then was borne in upon me the strong conviction—and so has it since been always, when thus my thoughts have been engaged—that because of my very love for Fray Antonio must I rejoice that he had died so savage a death; believing confidently that what he prayed for when first I found him in the Christian church of San Francisco was, in truth, that very crown of martyrdom that God granted to him when at last I lost him in the heathen city of Colhuacan. And with the pressing in upon me thus strangely of this strange thought, it seemed as though he himself said again to me, "I go to win the life, glorious and eternal, into which neither death nor sin nor sorrow evermore can come."
THE END.