“Ah,” said the chaplain regretfully, “the world’s standard for monks is always high.  But you will find it hard enough, especially in the first year.  But, as I said, I am not the man to advise you—­I failed.”

Chris looked at him with something of pity in his heart, as the priest fingered the iron pen on the table, and stared with pursed lips and frowning forehead.  The chaplain was extraordinarily silent in public, just carrying on sufficient conversation not to be peculiar or to seem morose, but he spoke more freely to Chris, and would often spend an hour or two in mysterious talk with Sir James.  Chris’s father had a very marked respect for the priest, and had had more than one sharp word with his wife, ten years before when he had first come to the house, and had found Lady Torridon prepared to treat her chaplain with the kind of respect that she gave to her butler.  But the chaplain’s position was secured by now, owing in a large measure to his own tact and unobtrusiveness, and he went about the house a quiet, sedate figure of considerable dignity and impressiveness, performing his duties punctually and keeping his counsel.  He had been tutor to both the sons for a while, to Ralph only for a few months, but to Chris since his twelfth birthday, and the latter had formed with him a kind of peaceful confederacy, often looking in on him at unusual hours, always finding him genial, although very rarely confidential.  It was to Mr. Carleton, too, that Chris owed his first drawings to the mystical life of prayer; there was a shelf of little books in the corner by the window of the priest’s room, from which he would read to the boy aloud, first translating them into English as he went, and then, as studies progressed, reading the Latin as it stood; and that mysteriously fascinating world in which great souls saw and heard eternal things and talked familiarly with the Saviour and His Blessed Mother had first dawned on the boy there.  New little books, too, appeared from time to time, and the volumes had overflowed their original home; and from that fact Christopher gathered that the priest, though he had left the external life of Religion, still followed after the elusive spirit that was its soul.

“But tell me,” he said again, as the priest laid the pen down and sat back in his chair, crossing his buckled feet beneath the cassock; “tell me, why is it so hard?  I am not afraid of the discipline or the food.”

“It is the silence,” said the priest, looking at him.

“I love silence,” said Chris eagerly.

“Yes, you love an hour or two, or there would be no hope of a vocation for you.  But I do not think you will love a year.  However, I may be wrong.  But it is the day after day that is difficult.  And there is no relaxation; not even in the infirmary.  You will have to learn signs in your novitiate; that is almost the first exercise.”

The priest got up and fetched a little book from the corner cupboard.