With you, and supported by your presence, she may bear it well; but, recollect how many are the lonely days and nights that she must pass during your absence, and how much she must require the consolation and help of others.  A secret like this must be as a gnawing worm, and, strong as she may be in courage, must shorten her existence, but for the support and the balm she may receive from the ministers of our faith.  It was cruel and selfish of you, Philip, to leave her, a lone woman, to bear up against your absence, and at the same time oppressed with so fatal a knowledge.”

“You have convinced me, holy Father,” replied Philip.  “I feel that I should, before this, have made you acquainted with this strange history.  I will now state the whole of the circumstances which have occurred, but with little hope your advice can help me, in a case so difficult, and in a duty so peremptory, yet so perplexing.”

Philip then entered into a minute detail of all that had passed from the few days previous to his mother’s death, until the present time, and when he had concluded, he observed—­

“You see, Father, that I have bound myself by a solemn vow—­that that vow has been recorded and accepted; and it appears to me that I have nothing now to do but to follow my peculiar destiny.”

“My son, you have told us strange and startling things—­things not of this world—­if you are not deceived.  Leave us now.  Father Mathias and I will consult upon this serious matter, and when we are agreed, you shall know our decision.”

Philip went upstairs to see Amine; she was still in a deep sleep:  he dismissed the servant, and watched by the bedside.  For nearly two hours did he remain there, when he was summoned down to meet the two priests.

“We have had a long conversation, my son,” said Father Seysen, “upon this strange, and perhaps supernatural occurrence.  I say perhaps, for I would have rejected the frenzied communications of your mother, as the imaginings of a heated brain; and for the same reason I should have been equally inclined to suppose that the high state of excitement that you were in at the time of her death may have disordered your intellect; but, as Father Mathias positively asserts, that a strange, if not supernatural, appearance of a vessel did take place, on his passage home, and which appearance tallies with and corroborates the legend, if so I may call it, to which you have given evidence; I say that it is not impossible but that it is supernatural.”

“Recollect that the same appearance of the Phantom Ship has been permitted to me and to many others,” replied Philip.

“Yes,” replied Father Seysen; “but who is there alive of those who saw it but yourself?  But that is of little importance.  We will admit that the whole affair is not the work of man, but of a superior intelligence.”

“Superior, indeed!” replied Philip.  “It is the work of Heaven!”