“My Father in God,” he cried, “behold, for my sins I have been visited by a demon—­” But as he spoke he perceived that those about him no longer heeded him, and that the Bishop and all his clergy had fallen on their knees about the pool.  Then the Hermit, following their gaze, saw that the brown waters of the pool covered the Wild Woman’s limbs as with a garment, and that about her floating head a great light floated; and to the utmost edges of the throng a cry of praise went up, for many were there whom the Wild Woman had healed and comforted, and who read God’s mercy in this wonder.  But fresh fear fell on the Hermit, for he had cursed a dying saint, and denounced her aloud to all the people; and this new anguish, coming so close upon the other, smote down his weakened frame, so that his limbs failed him and he sank once more to the ground.

Again the earth reeled about him, and the bending faces grew remote; but as he forced his weak voice once more to proclaim his sins he felt the blessed touch of absolution, and the holy oils of the last voyage laid on his lips and eyes.  Peace returned to him then, and with it a great longing to look once more upon his lauds, as he had dreamed of doing at his last hour; but he was too far gone to make this longing known, and so tried to banish it from his mind.  Yet in his weakness the wish held him, and the tears ran down his face.

Then, as he lay there, feeling the earth slip from under him, and the Everlasting Arms replace it, he heard a great peal of voices that seemed to come down from the sky and mingle with the singing of the throng; and the words of the chant were the words of his own lauds, so long hidden in the secret of his breast, and now rejoicing above him through the spheres.  And his soul rose on the chant, and soared with it to the seat of mercy.

THE LAST ASSET

I

“THE devil!” Paul Garnett exclaimed as he re-read his note; and the dry old gentleman who was at the moment his only neighbour in the quiet restaurant they both frequented, remarked with a smile:  “You don’t seem particularly annoyed at meeting him.”

Garnett returned the smile.  “I don’t know why I apostrophized him, for he’s not in the least present—­except inasmuch as he may prove to be at the bottom of anything unexpected.”

The old gentleman who, like Garnett, was an American, and spoke in the thin rarefied voice which seems best fitted to emit sententious truths, twisted his lean neck toward the younger man and cackled out shrewdly:  “Ah, it’s generally a woman who is at the bottom of the unexpected.  Not,” he added, leaning forward with deliberation to select a tooth-pick, “that that precludes the devil’s being there too.”

Garnett uttered the requisite laugh, and his neighbour, pushing back his plate, called out with a perfectly unbending American intonation:  “Gassong!  L’addition, silver play.”