"Poor old Norah is dead," he concluded, "but I had her affidavit taken, and if the will can be found there should be no difficulty in establishing it. The other witnesses are alive." They were sitting in the Father's study, a room severely plain in its furnishings, like all the apartments in the Clergy House. The table by which the Superior sat was covered with papers and letters, the signs of the large correspondence which Wynne knew Frontford to keep up with members of his order in England and this country. The furniture was stiff and uncompromising, the windows covered only by plain shades, while the bookshelves took an austere air from the dull leather of the bindings of their tall, formal volumes. Father Frontford leaned back in his uncushioned chair and pressed together his thin finger-tips in the gesture which was habitual with him, regarding the young man with keen eyes. "This property, if I understand you rightly, is now in the possession of the church?" "It was given by the will that was found to the church and to missions. Some of it went to the founding of a home for invalid priests. My aunt was the one of my relatives who was a churchwoman." "And if you succeed in finding and establishing this new will, you mean to divert the money to your own use?" "If the will is valid, is not the money mine?" The Father looked at him a moment before he answered. Then he sighed. "My son," he asked, "would you have put that question six months ago?" Maurice flushed, but he did not wish to show that he understood. "Why not?" he demanded. "There was not then in your heart a wish to wrest property from the church that you might enjoy it yourself." "I haven't any wish now to take from the church anything which is not mine already." "By divine right or by human?" the Father inquired with cold inflexibility. Maurice began to be irritated. He felt that he was being treated with too high a hand. "Have I no rights as a man?" demanded he warmly. The other sighed once more, and a look of genuine pain came into his face. "My son," he said with a gentleness which touched Maurice in spite of himself, "when you gave yourself to the church, did you keep back part of the price? Was not your gift all you were and all you might possess?" Maurice was silent. He could not for shame answer, that he did not then know that he had so much to give, and he realized too that this would then have made no difference. He felt as if he were now being held to a pledge which he had never meant to make, yet he could not see what reply there was to the words of the Superior. He cast down his eyes, but he said in his heart that he would not yield his claim; that the demand was unjust.