"'Oh, we must not stop to change! we should be tracked by some of their spies. We had better go on; and, as the road descends gently, I think this team will make the remainder of the route.' "'Well,' said our superior, as we re-entered the coach, 'we must all offer a Mass in thanksgiving to-morrow;' to which we all heartily assented, and found subject for conversation the rest of the way in recalling the particulars of our wondrous escape. "Holy obedience afterwards stationed me," continued the Reverend Father, "at the Gesú. About two years later, I was called upon to instruct a prisoner condemned to capital punishment. 'He appears to have been a desperate man,' said the jailer, as he drew aside the enormous bolts of iron that held fast the door of a corridor leading to a dismal dungeon; 'now, however, he is a little subdued; he even seems contrite at times, and I hope he will die penitent.' "I visited the prisoner several times; he was always glad to see me, but it cost him a great effort to open his heart, and make a full confession. His birth and parentage, and advantages for a liberal education, should have brought him to a widely-different destiny. He had loved adventure naturally, but had taken a wrong direction. He might have become a famous military man, whereas he was only a rough, desperate highwayman. To win him to God, I began to listen to narratives of his wild brigand exploits. I affected to be interested in these daring adventures, and then succeeded in pointing out to him the sin that abounded in each and every act. One day, as he was speaking of the latest years of his life, I was greatly surprised to hear him recount the identical incident with which I began my story. He described to me in the most graphic terms the wonderful manner in which his hands and those of his comrades had been held by an invisible, irresistible power, saying that they had returned to their mountain haunts perfectly dismayed; that some of them appeared to have a vague and conscientious alarm, though revelry and song soon banished such misgivings. He told me that they knew the carriage was full of Jesuit priests, and that they had been promised a great pecuniary reward by a prominent member of the Freemason Society if they should succeed in seizing our luggage. "I then made known to my penitent my share in that providential escape; he at once fell on his knees, wept long and bitterly, and finally asked my forgiveness. I prepared him for his dreadful end, and believe he died at peace with God, so great is the mercy of Jesus to the contrite soul, 'even though his sins be as scarlet.' I asked his permission to narrate the particulars of his portion of the story, and he gladly gave it, hoping to merit something for his sin-burdened soul by that act of humility."