These little ones were taught to serve at the Holy Sacrifice, and they performed their parts with care and reverence. They knelt and responded, they raised the priest’s chasuble and kissed its hem, they rang the bell at the sanctus and the elevation; and all they did, they did right well.
And when mass was over, they extinguished the altar lights, and then taking their little loaf and can of milk, retired to a side chapel for their breakfast.
One day the elder lad said to his master—
“Good father, who is the strange child who visits us every morning when we break our fast?”
“I know not,” answered the priest. And when the children asked the same question day by day, the old man wondered, and said, “Of what sort is he?”
“He is dressed in a white robe without seam, and it reacheth from his neck to his feet.”
“Whence cometh he?”
“He steppeth down to us, suddenly, as it were from the altar. And we ask him to share our food with us: and that he doth right willingly every morning.”
Then the priest wondered yet more, and he asked, “Are there marks by which I should know him, were I to see him?”