“It is nothing,” answered the stranger, awkwardly. “He told me you set great store on a new organ.”
Padre Ignazio turned away from the ship and rode back through the gorge. When he reached the shady place where once he had sat with Gaston Villere, he dismounted and again sat there, alone by the stream, for many hours. Long rides and outings had been lately so much his custom, that no one thought twice of his absence; and when he returned to the mission in the afternoon, the Indian took his mule, and he went to his seat in the garden. But it was with another look that he watched the sea; and presently the sail moved across the blue triangle, and soon it had rounded the headland. Gaston's first coming was in the padre's mind; and as the vespers bell began to ring in the cloistered silence, a fragment of Auber's plaintive tune passed like a sigh across his memory:
[Musical Score Appears Here]
But for the repose of Gaston's soul they sang all that he had taught them of “Il Trovatore.”
Thus it happened that Padre Ignazio never went home, but remained cheerful master of the desires to do so that sometimes visited him, until the day came when he was called altogether away from this world, and “passed beyond these voices, where is peace.”