Poor Ally! He could little comprehend how much it would cost him or me to say we believed it to be true. Excusing myself with all sorts of bungling remarks, I left the house, my mind torn by many conflicting doubts and emotions. Ally slowly, very slowly recovered. In the mean time a new organist, a poor man with a dreadful asthma, as I recollect, had taken his place. Deprived of the aid which his salary afforded them, the widow and Ally found it hard to live. The minister, it seems, related to his wife what had taken place at Ally's sick-bed, and it soon got bruited about that both Ally and his mother were going to turn Catholics. They soon left the village, and I did not hear of them until several years after. As for myself, it was not long before I took Ally's way across the fields to Mike Maloney's shanty, and now you know how I first came to think about it. "What became of Ally?" Well, I'll tell you. One day I happened to be in the city of Newark. It was the festival of Corpus Christi, and crowds were flocking to St. Patrick's cathedral to assist at the grand ceremonies that were to take place. At the gospel the preacher ascended the pulpit, and what was my surprise to recognize in the person of the youthful priest my dear boy-organist, Ally Dutton. He took for his text these words, "This is my body, this is my blood," and preached a powerful and eloquent sermon. After the services were concluded I went to the presbytery to call upon him, but he did not recognize me; so I said: "Allow me, reverend sir, to thank you for your beautiful sermon. This doctrine of the real presence which you Catholics hold is a wonderful and a very consoling doctrine; and what is more, _I am rather afraid it is true_." "Afraid!" answered Ally, smiling. "That reminds me of a dear old friend of mine who once said the same thing, but he was not long overcoming his fears." "And the dear old friend is sorry now," added I, looking at him closely, "that it was even so long as it was." "Doctor!" "Ally!" As I knelt to crave the blessing of our quondam boy-organist, now a priest of the holy Catholic church, he caught me in his arms and folded me in a warm embrace. ------ {71} Translated from les Etudes Religieuses, etc., etc. The Martyrs of Gorcum. I.