As his voice shook with passion and he faltered, Silvester raised his hand.

“We desire no recriminations.  Even the evidence is now useless, for what was to be done has been done.  For ourselves, we have no doubt as to its nature....  It was to this man that Christ gave the morsel through our hands, saying Quod faces, fac cities.  Cum ergo accepisset Me buccellam, exivit continuo.  Erat autem nox.”

Again fell the silence, and in the pause sounded a long half-vocal sigh from without the door.  It came and went as a sleeper turned, for the passage was crowded with exhausted men—­as a soul might sigh that passed from light to darkness.

Then Silvester spoke again.  And as He spoke He began, as if mechanically, to tear up a long paper, written with lists of names, that lay before Him.

“Eminences, it is three hours after dawn.  In two hours more We shall say mass in your presence, and give Holy Communion.  During those two hours We commission you to communicate this news to all who are assembled here; and further, We bestow on each and all of you jurisdiction apart from all previous rules of time and place; we give a Plenary Indulgence to all who confess and communicate this day.  Father—­” he turned to the Syrian—­“Father, you will now expose the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel, after which you will proceed to the village and inform the inhabitants that if they wish to save their lives they had best be gone immediately—­immediately, you understand.”

The Syrian started from his daze.

“Holiness,” he stammered, stretching out a hand, “the lists, the lists!”

(He had seen what these were.)

But Silvester only smiled as He tossed the fragments on to the table.  Then He stood up.

“You need not trouble, my son....  We shall not need these any more....

“One last word, Eminences....  If there is one heart here that doubts or is afraid, I have a word to say.”

He paused, with an extraordinarily simple deliberateness, ran the eyes round the tense faces turned to Him.

“I have had a Vision of God,” He said softly.  “I walk no more by faith, but by sight.”

II

An hour later the priest toiled back in the hot twilight up the path from the village, followed by half-a-dozen silent men, twenty yards behind, whose curiosity exceeded their credulousness.  He had left a few more standing bewildered at the doors of the little mud-houses; and had seen perhaps a hundred families, weighted with domestic articles, pour like a stream down the rocky path that led to Khaifa.  He had been cursed by some, even threatened; stared upon by others; mocked by a few.  The fanatical said that the Christians had brought God’s wrath upon the place, and the darkness upon the sky:  the sun was dying, for these hounds were too evil for him to look upon and live.  Others again seemed to see nothing remarkable in the state of the weather....