And none in that city ever saw the face of the preacher or heard his voice again.
Like a voice crying in the wilderness, he vanished again into the wilderness, and was heard no more.
But from the voices of the choir, begun it was scarcely known how, broke forth in a long wail the hymn—
"Apparebit repentina dies magna Domini."
When the last notes of the solemn chant had died away, and once more left a silence in the vast church, the multitude still kept together. A common instinct of unity seemed to have come on them, as on a besieged city, or on a ship in a storm.
Not to one, here and there, uncertainly, as death came; but to all! Suddenly, and this year, the one great event was to come, which was to unite them all and to divide them all for ever!
Not that this message and this terror were altogether new to them. Long it had been floating in the air that the distracted world was not to last beyond the thousand years.
The probability had long loomed vaguely before them; and now this stranger came and proclaimed, with assured conviction, the certainty.
They waited and waited on, as if listening for the first peal of the Last Trump; but no sound broke the stillness. The dusk silently died into the dark, the last rays faded from the Crucifix to which the monk had pointed, and then slowly the congregation began to creep away to their homes.
Out of the silent church under the solemn silent vault of stars; each household again beneath its own roof, yet all still under that great roof of heaven from which at any moment might burst the final fires.