ideas of our glorious founder and you know that he, at his own desire, was sent by saint Ignatius to preach to the Indians.  He is called, as you know, the apostle of the Indies.  He went from country to country in the east, from Africa to India, from India to Japan, baptizing the people.  He is said to have baptized as many as ten thousand idolaters in one month.  It is said that his right arm had grown powerless from having been raised so often over the heads of those whom he baptized.  He wished then to go to China to win still more souls for God but he died of fever on the island of Sancian.  A great saint, saint Francis Xavier!  A great soldier of God!

The rector paused and then, shaking his clasped hands before him, went on: 

—­He had the faith in him that moves mountains.  Ten thousand souls won for God in a single month!  That is a true conqueror, true to the motto of our order:  Ad MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM!  A saint who has great power in heaven, remember:  power to intercede for us in our grief; power to obtain whatever we pray for if it be for the good of our souls; power above all to obtain for us the grace to repent if we be in sin.  A great saint, saint Francis Xavier!  A great fisher of souls!

He ceased to shake his clasped hands and, resting them against his forehead, looked right and left of them keenly at his listeners out of his dark stern eyes.

In the silence their dark fire kindled the dusk into a tawny glow.  Stephen’s heart had withered up like a flower of the desert that feels the simoom coming from afar.

* * * * *

—­Remember only thy last things and thou shalt not sin for ever—­ words taken, my dear little brothers in Christ, from the book of Ecclesiastes, seventh chapter, fortieth verse.  In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.

Stephen sat in the front bench of the chapel.  Father Arnall sat at a table to the left of the altar.  He wore about his shoulders a heavy cloak; his pale face was drawn and his voice broken with rheum.  The figure of his old master, so strangely re-arisen, brought back to Stephen’s mind his life at Clongowes:  the wide playgrounds, swarming with boys; the square ditch; the little cemetery off the main avenue of limes where he had dreamed of being buried; the firelight on the wall of the infirmary where he lay sick; the sorrowful face of Brother Michael.  His soul, as these memories came back to him, became again a child’s soul.