“Alive, but sinking fast; sustained beyond all human calculation by the hope of seeing you.  You have not come one moment too soon.  The man you seek is only a lay brother here.  The rules of our Order forbid the admission of women to the cloister, but in articulo mortis! can I deny him now the confession he wishes to offer you?  Our holy ordinances have done their divine work; the last rites of the Church have soothed and consecrated the heart of Brother Luke, and an hour ago, extreme unction was administered.  Follow me.”

“He knows that I am coming?” asked Beryl, raising her white, tear-drenched face from her husband’s shoulder.

“He knows; and holds death back to see you.  His self-imposed penance makes him steadfastly refuse the comparative comfort of our meagre infirmary, and it is his wish to die, where he has spent so many nights in penitential prayer.  For several days, the paralysis of years has been gradually loosening its fetters, and this morning, the distressing and ghastly distortion of one side of his face almost disappeared.  Though his voice is well nigh gone, it returns fitfully, and his strength seems supernatural.  Fearing that you might not arrive in time, I have written down his last confession, and here commit it to you.”

He placed a roll of paper in her hand, and drawing his cowl over his head, led them up an easy stairway cut in the stone, to a second terrace four feet wide, that projected as a roof beyond the lower tier of cells.

A hundred feet below lay the lakelet, shining as a mirror; to the southeast stretched a valley bounded by buttes crowned with cedar, and in the undulating field, locked from fierce winds, cattle and goats sunned themselves, where in summer time grain waved, fruit ripened, and bees hummed.

From the parapet of a low wall facing west, rose a round tower heavily buttressed, where swung the bell; and through an open arch in the side, under the uplifted cross, the eye swept on and on, over a world of snowy peaks, dark canons, mountain minarets girding the northern horizon; and far, far away a scintillating thread of white fire marked where the Pacific smiled behind the fiords that channelled the rock-ribbed coast.

In that still, cold and brilliant atmosphere, how dazzling the snow blink, how sharp the outline of projected shadows, how close the bending heavens seemed; but to the yearning soul of Beryl, the silent, solemn sublimity of the mighty panorama made no appeal.

Through slowly dripping tears she saw only the spectral flitting of her mother’s sad face, as in their last interview she had committed the soul of the son to the guardianship of the daughter.

The monk paused, and pointed to the third cell from the spot where he stood.

“It is but a step farther.  Yonder, where the skull is set over the entrance.”

“I will wait here,” said Mr. Dunbar, relinquishing with a tight pressure, his wife’s cold hand.