The cry for bread.
"Bread," he whispered. "The body—"
He shattered the water breaker with his fist. There was a suggestion of moisture on the inside of the staves of the cask. He drew his finger across them and touched it to the woman's lips.
"Water," he said hoarsely. "The blood—"
The terror, the yearning, disappeared from the woman's eyes. She looked at the man sanely, gratefully.
"God bless—" she faltered and then her lips stiffened.
Some tag of quaint old Scripture that had impressed him when he first heard it because of its very strangeness, but of which he had never thought in all the years of his rough life since boyhood, came into the man's mind now. He lifted his head as if to see again that figure.
"A priest forever," he gasped, "after the order of Melchis—"