She said at once that this spirit should be exorcised and set free from the bondage of earth, and that she had an old friend, a Franciscan monk, who was known to be a powerful exorcist. She offered to arrange the matter, and I gladly accepted her suggestion.
It was on an early spring afternoon that Father Reginald Buckler came to the house. In his white habit, sandaled feet and shorn crown, he looked an incongruous figure in that fashionable locality already beginning its social entertainments in view of the season's approach. He was a charming, courteous old man, who took his mission very seriously. After a few words of explanation we mounted to the bedroom floor.
There were four doors opening on to the little landing, and without asking which of the doors led to the haunted chamber, he turned the handle of the right one and entered. Still he put no question, but at once proceeded with the Service of Exorcism.
Sprinkling the four corners of the room with Holy Water, he bade me kneel down in the middle. Then he raised his Crucifix and offered up prayers for the repose of the earth-bound soul, that he might be loosed and set free.
For five weeks longer we remained in the house, but I never saw the sailor again.
CHAPTER XI
DAWNS
We have been given many wonderful dawns this winter, and I have used them eagerly as a cleansing of the war-weary mind and distracted soul. In such ethereal apparitional dawns one walks with the Eternal, and all temporal things fade away. Those pale silver daybreaks have a rapture of their own, they suggest a fresh creation straight from the looms of God. When the hours of day have drawn on the flaming sunset, that exquisitely serene emotion of virgin tranquillity will have passed away, and the horizon will be lurid and grand beneath a grave frowning sadness gathered from the scenes of earth they have brooded over.