Bridget, the housemaid, always insisted that he died a Catholic.  She had seen the crucifix, and believed that he prayed on his knees before it.  The last circumstance is very probably true; indeed, there was a spot worn on the carpet just before this cabinet which might be thus accounted for.  Why he, whose whole life was a crucifixion, should not love to look on that divine image of blameless suffering, I cannot see; on the contrary, it seems to me the most natural thing in the world that he should.  But there are those who want to make private property of everything, and can’t make up their minds that people who don’t think as they do should claim any interest in that infinite compassion expressed in the central figure of the Christendom which includes us all.

The divinity-student expressed a hope before the boarders that he should meet him in heaven.—­The question is, whether he’ll meet you,—­said the young fellow John, rather smartly.  The divinity-student had n’t thought of that.

However, he is a worthy young man, and I trust I have shown him in a kindly and respectful light.  He will get a parish by-and-by; and, as he is about to marry the sister of an old friend,—­the Schoolmistress, whom some of us remember,—­and as all sorts of expensive accidents happen to young married ministers, he will be under bonds to the amount of his salary, which means starvation, if they are forfeited, to think all his days as he thought when he was settled,—­unless the majority of his people change with him or in advance of him.  A hard ease, to which nothing could reconcile a man, except that the faithful discharge of daily duties in his personal relations with his parishioners will make him useful enough in his way, though as a thinker he may cease to exist before he has reached middle age.

—­Iris went into mourning for the Little Gentleman.  Although, as I have said, he left the bulk of his property, by will, to a public institution, he added a codicil, by which he disposed of various pieces of property as tokens of kind remembrance.  It was in this way I became the possessor of the wonderful instrument I have spoken of, which had been purchased for him out of an Italian convent.  The landlady was comforted with a small legacy.  The following extract relates to Iris:  “in consideration of her manifold acts of kindness, but only in token of grateful remembrance, and by no means as a reward for services which cannot be compensated, a certain messuage, with all the land thereto appertaining, situated in ______ Street, at the North End, so called, of Boston, aforesaid, the same being the house in which I was born, but now inhabited by several families, and known as ‘The Rookery.’” Iris had also the crucifix, the portrait, and the red-jewelled ring.  The funeral or death’s-head ring was buried with him.