Winter came, a very severe winter.  The poor holy water sprinkler died and the parish priest appointed the wheelwright, whose misfortunes had come to his knowledge, to replace him.  He went every morning and sat in the same place, on the same chair, wearing away the old stone pillar by continually leaning against it.  He would gaze steadily at every man who entered the church and looked forward to Sunday with as much impatience as a schoolboy, for on that day the church was filled with people from morning till night.

He became very old, growing weaker each day from the dampness of the church, and his hope oozed away gradually.

He now knew by sight all the people who came to the services; he knew their hours, their manners, could distinguish their step on the stone pavement.

His interests had become so contracted that the entrance of a stranger in the church was for him a great event.  One day two ladies came in; one was old, the other young—­a mother and daughter probably.  Behind them came a man who was following them.  He bowed to them as they came out, and after offering them some holy water, he took the arm of the elder lady.

“That must be the fiance of the younger one,” thought the wheelwright.  And until evening he kept trying to recall where he had formerly seen a young man who resembled this one.  But the one he was thinking of must be an old man by this time, for it seemed as if he had known him down home in his youth.

The same man frequently came again to walk home with the ladies, and this vague, distant, familiar resemblance which he could not place worried the old man so much that he made his wife come with him to see if she could help his impaired memory.

One evening as it was growing dusk the three strangers entered together.  When they had passed the old man said: 

“Well, do you know him?”

His wife anxiously tried to ransack her memory.  Suddenly she said in a low tone: 

“Yes—­yes—­but he is darker, taller, stouter and is dressed like a gentleman, but, father, all the same, it is your face when you were young!”

The old man started violently.

It was true.  He looked like himself and also like his brother who was dead, and like his father, whom he remembered while he was yet young.  The old couple were so affected that they could not speak.  The three persons came out and were about to leave the church.

The man touched his finger to the holy water sprinkler.  Then the old man, whose hand was trembling so that he was fairly sprinkling the ground with holy water, exclaimed: 

“Jean!”

The young man stopped and looked at him.

He repeated in a lower tone: 

“Jean!”

The two women looked at them without understanding.

He then said for the third time, sobbing as he did so: 

“Jean!”

The man stooped down, with his face close to the old man’s, and as a memory of his childhood dawned on him he replied: