"By the multitude of Thy mercies, ever compassionate to human frailty, deliver him, O Lord!" Barty's husky, shaking voice murmured. "Give him, O Lord, eternal rest, and let perpetual light shine upon him--" The door was opened and Evans said: "The police are here, and are asking for Mr. Mangan." Barty rose from his knees; without a word, he placed the prayer book in Larry's hands, and left the room. Larry had risen also, but instead of following Barty he knelt again by the Big Doctor's still figure, and began to speak to him in the low voice that is the mark of recognition of the great mystery of death, and tells of that singular, sudden reverence that is bestowed on the body when the spirit has left it; a reverence that seems to imply a belief in the nearness of the freed spirit, which is unsupported by the immeasurable remoteness of the expression of the mask that it once wore. "Doctor," said Larry, "I don't know if you can hear me, but I'll chance it. I want to tell you that it's not my fault about Tishy, and the wedding not coming off. She bolted with Ned Cloherty last night--" he checked himself, and felt he ought to apologise for talking slang, and then thought that if it were the Doctor, himself, he wouldn't mind. "Tishy liked Cloherty best," he hurried on, "and she was probably quite right, but I want you to know that I would have played up all right." Then he said, hesitating, that Barty had told him a thing that he didn't quite understand the rights of. "You must forgive me if I felt angry. I daresay there's a lot to be said on your side if I only knew it. But I don't and you can't tell me now--" He stood up, and touching the cold brow, smoothed back the damp hair. "You were always awfully good to me," he said, and, stooping, kissed the forehead, as Barty had done, and found that his eyes were full of tears. As he stood erect again, he saw he was not alone in the room. A girl was standing just behind him with a basket of Christmas roses in her hand, a girl who had come quietly in while he was speaking, and had waited, watching, with eyes that saw more than Larry's kneeling figure beside the dead man, listening, with senses that were perceptive of a fellow-listener, in whom were newly-learnt impulses of self-reproach and penitence. "Christian!" said Larry, trembling, as he had trembled when he spoke to her by the Druid Stone on Cnocán an Ceoil Sidhe.