* * * * *

When the priest reached the Lady chapel he sat down, still trembling a little, and threw all his attention into his ears, determined to hear the first movement that the kneeling figure made behind him.  So he sat minute after minute.  The Cathedral was full of echoes—­murmurous rebounds of the noises of the streets, drawn out and mellowed into long, soft, rolling tones, against which, as against a foil, there stood out detached, now and then, the sudden footsteps of someone leaving or entering a confessional, the short scream of a slipping chair—­once the sudden noise of a confessional-door being opened and the click of the handle which turned out the electric light.  And it was full of shadows, too; a monstrous outline crossed and recrossed the apse behind the High Altar, as the sacristan moved about; once a hand, as of a giant, remained poised for an instant somewhere on the wall beside the throne.  It seemed to the priest, tired and clear-brained as he was, as if he sat in some place of expectation—­some great cavern where mysteries moved and passed in preparation for a climax.  All was hushed and confused, yet alive; and the dark waves would break presently in the glory of the midnight Mass.

He scarcely knew what held him there, nor what it was for which he waited.  He thought of the lighted common-room at the end of the long corridor beyond the sacristy.  He wondered who was there; perhaps one or two were playing billiards and smoking; they had had a hard day of it and would scarcely get to bed before three.  And yet, here he sat, tired and over-strained, yet waiting—­waiting for a disreputable-looking young man in a dirty suit and muffler and big boots, to give over praying before a curtain in an empty aisle.

A figure presently came softly round the corner behind him.  It was the priest whom he had heard leaving his confessional just now.

“Haven’t you done yet?” whispered the new-comer, pausing behind his chair.

“Coming in a minute or two,” he said.

The figure passed on; presently a door banged like muffled thunder somewhere beyond the sacristy, and simultaneously he heard a pair of boots going down the aisle behind.

He got up instantly, and with long, silent steps made his way down the aisle also.  The figure wheeled the corner and disappeared; he himself ran on tip-toe and was in time to see him turning away from the holy-water basin by the door.  But he came so quickly after him that the door was still vibrating as he put his hand upon it.  He came out more cautiously through the little entrance, and stood on the steps in time to see the young man moving off, not five yards away, in the direction of Victoria Street.  But here something stopped him.

Coming straight up the pavement outside the Art and Book Company depot was a newsboy at the trot, yelling something as he came, with a poster flapping from one arm and a bundle of papers under the other.  The priest could not catch what he said, but he saw the young man suddenly stop and then turn off sharply towards the boy, and he saw him, after fumbling in his pocket, produce a halfpenny and a paper pass into his hands.