The garb had not grown strange to Antonio: for since his expulsion from the abbey rarely had a day passed without his saying some part of the Divine Office, garbed in the rusty habit which he had worn at Navares. But, as he donned the Benedictine uniform in his own cell of a Benedictine abbey, the monk's emotion overpowered him. The cell was too straight and dark for the immense and sublime expansion of his spirit. He hastened out, along the dim corridor, and up the winding steps which led to the flat roof of the cloister. Antonio sat down on the cork bench where he had mused on the night of his ordination, just before he heard the chink of steel. The November moonlight was not less gracious than the May dusk. The cross in the monks' graveyard uprose as white and slender as a taper on an altar, and all the earth seemed consecrated ground. And there the young priest sat for a long time, without moving, while he recalled, beginning with the march to Navares, the motley events which had filled the one-and-forty months of his exile. Finally he lived over again his last night in the abbey. Other men, other scenes, other words, other deeds seemed faint and far away: but the face of the dying Abbot was clear in his memory, and the old man's words might still have been sounding in the young monk's ears. Above all else the Abbot's prophecy rang out like bells: "I see our chapel, swept and garnished. I see Antonio, in his old place, doing the work of God." The hour was come. He rose and descended the spiral stairway. At the entrance of the chapel he paused, and, falling upon his knees, implored pardon for his brief apostasy in the roadside wine-shop. Then with bowed head and reverent steps he crossed the sacred threshold. The few windows were placed so high and were so deeply set in the thick walls that very little moonlight could enter the chapel. Nearly all the nave was filled with darkness. But the choir, raised on a marble floor, could be dimly seen, while the altar, higher still, received the full glory of the light. The doors of the empty tabernacle were wide open, as on Good Friday, the six tall candles still stood in their places, and no one had removed the vases with their silver-gilt symbols of the Holy Eucharist--wheat-ears and vine-leaves and grapes. Behind the crucifix rose a statue of our Lady treading down a serpent and holding forth towards Antonio the divine Child. Upon his head was a crown set with brilliants of old paste which burned bluish white in the cold moonlight. Antonio groped his way to his old stall. There, humbly kneeling upon his knees, he offered up his prayers and praise. He prayed for his brethren of three years before, picturing each one of them in his particular stall; and his most fervent petitions were for the good estate of Father Sebastian, alive or dead.