“I couldn’t go back,” he said to the burning log, “I couldn’t be great again when I know how much true happiness there is in being little.”

Then he lifted his eyes to where, from above the fireplace, there smiled down at him the benign face of Pius the Tenth.  “Poor Pope,” he said.  “He has to be great, but this is what he would love.  He never could get away from it quite.  Doesn’t he preach to the people yet, so as to feel the happiness of the pastor, and thus forget for an hour the fears and trials of the ruler?”

The fire was dying, but he did not stoop to replenish it.  His thoughts were too holy and comforting to be broken in upon.  But they were broken by Ann’s knock.

“That McCarthy is sick ag’in,” she said. “’Tis a nice time for the likes of him to be botherin’ yer Riverence.  Will I tell them ye’ll go in the mornin’?”

“No, Ann, tell them I’ll go now.”

“Can’t ye have wan night in peace?”

“McCarthy is peace, Ann.  You don’t understand.”

No, Ann didn’t understand.  She only saw more labor.  She didn’t understand that it was only this that the priest needed to crown the glory of his day.

So Father Murray took his coat and hat and, with a light step, went out—­a father going to the son who needed him.

He was not a bit tired when he came back to the blazing logs; but now he was perturbed, borne down by a prescience of coming change.  From one point to another he walked—­slowly, uneasily, pausing now and then.  Finally he stood by his desk.  Above it hung a large crucifix.  His lips moved in prayer as he gazed on the crucified Christ.  Then idly he picked up a book.  It fell open in his hand, and he gazed thoughtfully at the oft-scanned page.  How many times had he pondered those two lines,

  “I fear to love thee, sweet, because
  Love’s the ambassador of loss.”

Thus read the priest who felt that peace was no longer possible.  For a little while, perhaps—­but not for long.  The call would come again, and he would have to answer.  He read once more, changing one word as he spoke the lines softly to himself,

  “I fear to love thee, ‘peace,’ because
  Love’s the ambassador of loss.”

Yet, even in his vague unrest, this prelate who through humility had found the greater love, recalled his own words to Mark Griffin:  “No one has lost what he sincerely seeks to find.”  Was not the past merely a preparation for the future?  Peace might be found in any kind of duty.  He looked up into the face of the sculptured Christ, and a swiftly-receding wave of agony swept across his mobile features, while his hand clenched tightly.  “A soldier of the Cross,” he murmured, and the hand was raised in quick salute.  “Thy will be done.”  It was his final renunciation of self.

Sinking into the chair before the desk, he sat there with bowed head.  At last he arose and, the book still in his hand, went back to his chair by the fire.  As he sat looking into the flames, his old dreams of greater works rose up before him—­those things that had been quite forgotten in his days of sorrow.  They were coming back to life, and he began to be half afraid of these, his dream children.  Already they seemed too real.