The crowd was wholly quiet again now.  My lord had finished his whispering, and was looking up.  But the priest had made his little sermon, and thought that he had best pray aloud before his strength failed him.  His knees were already shaking violently under him, and the sweat was pouring again from his face, not so much from the effort of his speech as from the pain which that effort caused him.  It seemed that there was not one nerve in his body that was not in pain.

“I ask all Catholics, then, that hear me to join with me in prayer....  First, for Christ’s Catholic Church throughout the world, for her peace and furtherance....  Next, for our England, for the conversion of all her children; and, above all, for her Grace, my Queen and yours, that God will bless and save her in this world, and her soul eternally in the next.  For these and all other such matters I will beg all Catholics to join with me and to say the Our Father; and when I am in my agony to say yet another for my soul.”

“Our Father....”

From the whole packed space the prayer rose up, in great and heavy waves of sound.  There were cries of mockery three or four times, but each was suddenly cut off....  The waves of sound rolled round and ceased, and the silence was profound.  The priest opened his eyes; closed them again.  Then with a loud voice he began to cry: 

“O Christ, as Thine arms were extended—­”

* * * * *

He stopped again, shaken even from that intense point of concentration to which he was forcing himself, by the amazing sound that met his ears.  He had heard, at the close of the Our Father, a noise which he could not interpret:  but no more had happened.  But now the whole world seemed screaming and swaying:  he heard the trample of horses beneath him—­voices in loud expostulation.

He opened his eyes; the clamour died again at the same instant....  For a moment his eyes wandered over the heads and up to the sky, to see if some vision....  Then he looked down....

Against the ladder on which he stood, a man’s figure was writhing and embracing the rungs kneeling on the ground.  He was strangely dressed, in some sort of a loose gown, in a tight silk night-cap, and his feet were bare.  The man’s head was dropped, and the priest could not see his face.  He looked beyond for some explanation, and there stood, all alone, a girl in a hooded cloak, who raised her great eyes to his.  As he looked down again the man’s head had fallen back, and the face was staring up at him, so distorted with speechless entreaty, that even he, at first, did not recognize it....

Then he saw it to be his father, and understood enough, at least, to act as a priest for the last time.

He smiled a little, leaned his own head forward as from a cross, and spoke....

“Absolvo te a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti....”