It does not need a very vivid imagination to voice the sentiments of Aston and his fiancee on the subject of Bernard’s extraordinary conduct—­as it would appear to them.

“I was always afraid,” the successful suitor would doubtless exclaim, “that Murray would be the fortunate chap; he was so jolly clever—­and good looking, too!”

“Of course,” we may imagine the lady responding, “he was all right in that way—­handsome, and well-bred, and all that sort of thing.  But surely affection is the only thing one really values, dear, and you were always so faithful,” etc., etc., etc.

Meanwhile, in the great Trappist monastery beyond the Irish Sea a Brother Patrick labored and prayed—­if so be he might make some reparation, at least for past unfaithfulness to so bountiful a Lord.

* * * * * *

“You must have been working hard at your prayers, Ted,” was Val’s morning salutation to me when I went in to breakfast one day.

“What, am I late?” I asked, glancing at my watch.

“Oh, that’s nothing unusual,” was the unkind response, “But I was not thinking of this morning in particular.  Don’t you remember what I asked you to pray for?”

“To be sure I do.  For a particularly good mistress for the school.”  (For we had just had the misfortune to lose one who was next door to perfection, and wanted to increase in perfection by entering a convent, and Val had been worrying himself to replace her before the holidays were over.)

“So you’ve heard of one?  That’s good!” I continued.

“Well, not exactly,” said Val.  “I’ve heard of a person who is on the lookout for a place of this kind, and reference seem quite correct, but——­”

“But what?  If she is all right, why hesitate?  Write at once, my dear fellow, and snap her up before some one else does!”

Val’s eyes twinkled.

“It’s not a she at all.  That’s the difficulty.  It’s a master who is applying.”

I whistled my astonishment, then shook my head in distrust.

“If he’s not a fraud he must be fooling you!” I rejoined irreverently.  “No capable master would come up here.”

“Read that before you make a pronouncement,” said Val, as he threw a letter across the table to me.

It proved to be from an old college friend of Val’s, and backed up very warmly the application for our vacant post of a young man who was an excellent trained teacher, who had tried his vocation as a monk, and had failed through a breakdown in health.  He was in want of an easy berth in good country air, where he could pick up his strength and fit himself for entering college to train for the secular priesthood in a couple of years.  No man with sense in his head would think twice about closing with such a promising candidate; Val wrote back gladly accepting the young man.

So Bernard Murray came to Ardmuirland, and won all our hearts in no time.