Father Cyprian Hammond sat alone in the winter gloaming after a hard day's work in his parish, which was a large one, covering several of those obscure little slums that lie hidden behind handsome streets in north-western London. The table had been cleared after his short and simple dinner, and he was half reclining in his deep arm-chair while Sabatier's "Life of St. Francis of Assisi" lay open on the table under the candles that made only a spot of light in the lofty room. It was one of the books which he opened often on an evening of fatigue and depression. The "Life" or the "Fioretti" were books that rested his brain and soothed his spirits. He lay back in his chair with his eyes closed, not asleep, but resting, and listening with a kind of sensuous pleasure to the light fall of wood ashes on the hearth. His winter fire of old ship logs was one of the few luxuries he allowed himself. "I told you I would see no one to-night," he said, as his servant came into the room. "It is Mr. Rutherford, Father, only just back from Italy. He said he was sure you would see him." "Very good, I will see Mr. Rutherford. You can light the lamp. Come in, Claude," he called to the figure standing outside the door. Claude came into the room, while the servant lighted a standard lamp of considerable power, that shone full upon a face from which all natural carnation had changed to an ashen greyness, the face of a man in the last stage of a bad illness. "You look dead-beat," said the priest, as they clasped hands. "You have been travelling night and day, I suppose." "I came straight from her grave, from their grave. She lies in the cemetery at San Marco, beside her husband and his daughter, the girl who loved her, and whose love brought those two together." "It was her wish, I conclude." "There was a letter found--a letter written half a year ago, at the beginning of her illness, in which she begged that I would lay her there--in his grave--nowhere else. It was he that she loved best, always, always. Her real, her only perfect love was for him." "May that absolve her of her sins. I would have done much, striven long and late to bring her into the fold, if she would have let me, but she would not. Well, she shall not want for an intercessor while I live and pray." And then, looking up at his visitor, who stood before him, a tragical figure in the bright, hard light of the lamp, his face haggard and wan against the rich darkness of his sable collar: "Sit down, Claude," he said gently, in a tone of ineffable compassion, the voice that day by day had spoken to sorrow and to sin. "I see you have come to tell me your troubles. Take off that heavy coat and draw your chair to the fire, and open your heart to me, unless indeed you will come to my confessional to-morrow and let me hear you there. I would much rather you did that."