"Heavens!" exclaimed Dick, in a suppressed voice, and with a start of terror, "how like my poor old father he looks just now!"
"Like your father?" reiterated Garriehorne.
"Yes—yes: he is the poor old man's image—just as he lay dead at Alexandria, when I rolled him in my blanket and buried him in the sand, digging his grave with my bayonet—God rest him!"
"The rector's history is a strange one," said Father Cameron; "but we know not his name, therefore we call him James of St. Margaret."
"But how came he here?"
"Listen," replied the priest in a low voice, and they all drew aside. "Many years ago I was at sea, flying for safety from Argyllshire, having been hunted from parish to parish, because I had dared to say mass in secret to our people—for to perform the offices of our faith in Scotland was then to commit a crime. Our vessel was running seaward down the Sound of Mull, when a boat was discovered adrift, without sails or oars; and in that boat we found a little child—a boy—asleep, or worn by terror and the tossing waves into a dreamless torpor. He was brought on board, and to me the discovery of a boy floating thus upon the sea, like Amadis de Gaul or Florizel in their baskets, as we read in the old romances; or like Moses or Judas Iscariot, as we may read in the writings of the Fathers, seemed of great import—the more so, as I found an amulet, or reliquary, at his neck, wherein was a relic of St. Margaret, with a prophecy written by one whom I knew, for I was then but a youth—yea, knew well——"
"Father John of Douay?" exclaimed Dick Duff.
"Yes; John Macdonald of Douay—how know you that?"
"Ask me not—ask me not, sir—-but proceed."
"Yes, written by the most reverend father, John of Douay (who was butchered by the French in Flanders), foretelling that this child would yet become great in the church, and would serve God at His altar long and faithfully——"