or so, a naval officer perhaps, a stray priest sometimes, an earnest seeker after Christian example often, and often a drunkard who had been dumped down at the door of St. Agnes’ Mission House in the hope that where everybody else had failed Father Rowley might succeed.  Then there were the tramps, some who had heard of a comfortable night’s lodging, some who came whining and cringing with a pretence of religion.  This last class was discouraged as much as possible, for one of the first rules of the Mission House was to show no favour to any man who claimed to be religious, it being Father Rowley’s chief dread to make anybody’s religion a paying concern.  Sometimes a jailbird just released from prison would find in the Mission House an opportunity to recover his self-respect.  But whoever the guest was, soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, apothecary, ploughboy, or thief, he was judged at the Mission House as a man.  Some of the visitors repaid their host by theft or fraud; but when they did, nobody uttered proverbs or platitudes about mistaken kindness.  If one lame dog bit the hand that was helping him over the stile, the next dog that came limping along was helped over just as freely.

“What right has one miserable mortal to be disillusioned by another miserable mortal?” Father Rowley demanded.  “Our dear Lord when he was nailed to the cross said ’Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’  He did not say, ’I am fed up with these people I have come down from Heaven to save.  I’ve had enough of it.  Send an angel with a pair of pincers to pull out these nails.’”

If the Missioner’s patience ever failed, it was when he had to deal with High Church young men who made pilgrimages to St. Agnes’ because they had heard that this or that service was conducted there with a finer relish of Romanism than anywhere else at the moment in England.  On one occasion a pietistic young creature, who brought with him his own lace cotta but forgot to bring his nightshirt, begged to be allowed the joy of serving Father Rowley at early Mass next morning.  When they came back and were sitting round the breakfast table, this young man simpered in a ladylike voice: 

“Oh, Father, couldn’t you keep your fingers closed when you give the Dominus vobiscum?”

“Et cum spiritu tuo,” shouted Father Rowley.  “I can keep my fingers closed when I box your ears.”

And he proved it.

It was a real box on the ears, so hard a blow that the ladylike young man burst into tears to the great indignation of a Chief Petty Officer staying in the Mission House, who declared that he was half in a mind to catch the young swab such a snitch on the conk as really would give him something to blubber about.  Father Rowley evidently had no remorse for his violence, and the young man went away that afternoon saying how sorry he was that the legend of the good work being done at St. Agnes’ had been so much exaggerated.