Father Temple laid the bundle of papers on the table and grasped Mr. Herriott's hand, pressing it warmly, but something in the bright, steady grey eyes warned him to attempt no verbal expression of gratitude. His host lighted a cigar, and drew from a stand near his elbow a portfolio tied with purple tape. "Does your reverence ever waste time now in sketches and water-color?" "Life is far too strenuous for such trifling." "How do you know that some day you will not be required to dig up that buried talent and answer the charge of neglecting to bring in the expected interest? Nature intended you for one of her artistic interpreters, and if you had been loyal to her commission you might rank to-day as R.A. Last summer I was searching an old trunk for a college text-book, when I happened to find some of your drawings, that were packed by mistake with my luggage in the bustle of leaving the university." From the pile of loose sheets he held up one, and, after a moment's survey, in which he turned it at various angles, he handed it to his guest. Father Temple was leaning back in a cushioned arm-chair, and against the violet velvet background his pale, placid, scholarly face was sharply silhouetted. Listlessly raising the sketch sidewise, so that a gas jet on his left shone upon it, he looked at it. The profound repose that habitually rested on his countenance broke up swiftly, as a sleeping pool shivers when a stone is hurled into its motionless depths. His lips whitened, and he laid the paper as a screen over his eyes. Mr. Herriott crossed the floor to the door of the dining-room, and, loitering deliberately, ordered coffee. When he came back, followed by a servant bearing coffee and liqueurs, the priest was standing at an open window, and in the clenched fingers of the hands clasped behind him the sketch quivered as though shaken by the wind. "Close the door, Hawkins, and when I want you I will ring. Come, Vernon; I remember your fondness for coffee, and this is good and piping hot." The thin figure in the girded cassock shook his head and leaned out of the window, staring up at the golden stars throbbing above the roar and din of the crowded street. After some minutes, during which the host rattled cups and glasses, Father Temple walked up and down the room, then came back to the table. The despairing sorrow in his deep, soft eyes made Mr. Herriott rise instantly. "Vernon, have I wounded you by my reminiscent babble of college days?" Without a word, the arms of the priest were lifted to the man towering over him, and he laid his head on the shoulder of one who had never failed him. "Temple, forgive me, dear old fellow, if I have broken rudely into some sacred, sealed chamber."