Father Walter had watched through the preceding night, and had felt less than he did at present; he had done it as a duty, as the mere fulfilment of a promise. He was familiar with the deathbed, the coffin, and grave; and as usual, they had lost much of their impressiveness. But now for some reason,--perhaps that his own heart was not well at ease,--he felt sensations of awe and gloom creep over him. He knelt and murmured prayers before the altar; he went through some of the ceremonial observances of his religion; but they now gave him no relief. The words fell cold and meaningless from his lips; the sign of the cross, the genuflexion, and the counted beads, seemed for the first time all dull forms, having no reference to the heart. Then he came forward and gazed upon the coffin; and memory recalled many an event connected with him who now lay so still within. He had known him for many years: he recollected him in his youth, and in his prime, and memory ran back over the long chain of linked hours, pausing here and there upon the brighter spots, till the natural affections of the heart--which not even the cold philosophy of a religion which bars its priesthood from all the more kindly associations of human life, can ever totally extinguish--were reawakened by the thoughts, and some of the fresh and generous impulses of earlier years rose up, and brought a tear into his eye. Again he knelt down and prayed; but it seemed that, in the act of prayer, a voice from the cross above the altar reached his heart mournfully and reproachfully. He thought it asked him if, in the counsels he was giving, if in the deeds he was sanctioning, he was a true follower of the guileless and holy Saviour, of the pure, the true, the meek, who showed God to be truth and love, and falsehood, deceit and wrong, to be the offspring of the arch-enemy. He covered his face with his hands as if the All-seeing eye were more especially upon him; and then starting up he murmured, "I wish I had taken no part in this." With a quick and agitated step, he paced the nave of the chapel; and, as he did so, half spoken words betrayed the troublous anxiety of his soul.