As Sebastian had stood next to Antonio in juniority among the choir-monks, the stalls of the two men were side by side. Sebastian sat down in his old place and Antonio did likewise. The chapel was dim; but the younger man could see that the elder's body had wasted almost to a skeleton. Yet there was nothing repellent about him. The bloom on his cheeks and the fire in his eyes had the solemn beauty of a sunset in an autumnal forest. When he began to speak his voice was so soft and sweet that it seemed to come from some far-off holy height. "To-day, Father Antonio," he said, "completes the ninth year since you sat on the cloister roof and heard the hoofs of the horsemen who had come to thrust us from this house. And, this morning, it is just nine years since you were raised to the priesthood. I asked our Lord to give me strength for the journey, so that I might spend this anniversary with you. He has heard me." "Who told you that I was here?" Antonio asked. Sebastian did not reply. But there was that in his eyes which gave Antonio a sufficient answer. Here was a saint who walked in the light. "Nine years," mused Sebastian aloud. "And you have not yet said your first Mass." "No," replied Antonio. "But God is good. Every year He enables me to send a little cask of wine for the altar to a poor church in England. Six days a week I work amid wine; and is not wine the matter of His great Sacrament? It consoles me to know that although I cannot say Mass, I can serve His table. Although I cannot, like Mary, his mother, bear Him in my hands, I can be like those other Marys at the sepulcher. _Emerunt aromata ut venientes ungerent Jesum_: 'They brought sweet spices that they might anoint Jesus.'" "He is not a God of the dead, but of the living," said Sebastian, in sweet, far-off tones. "We do not offer a dead Christ. Say rather that you are like that favored unknown to whom He sent two disciples saying, _Ubi est diversorium ubi pascha cum discipulis meis manducem_: 'Where is the guest-chamber where I may eat the Passover with My disciples?' But come. Our time together is short, and there is much to say. First of all, I have brought your breviary which you charged me to keep." He pointed to a package lying on the Prior's seat. Antonio rose and took it with joyful gratitude. When he returned to his stall he said: "Suffer my questions first. Whence do you come? Where have you lived these nine long years?"