ST. CATHERINE'S was the life work of an old priest, who is remembered now and presently will be forgotten. There are gargoyles over the entrance aside, with their mouths open to express astonishment. They spout rain water at times, but you need not get under them; and there are towers, and buttresses, a great clock, a gilded cross, and roofs that go dimly heavenward.

St. Catherine's is new. The neighborhood squats around it in different pathetic attitudes. Opposite is the saloon of the wooden-legged man; then the three groceries whose cabbages all look unpleasant; the parochial school with the green lattice; and all those little wooden houses—where lives, for instance, the dressmaker who funnily calls herself “Modiste.” Beyond the street the land drops down to the freight yards.

But Father Connell died about the time they finished the east oriel, and Father Harra reigned over the house of the old man's dreams—a red-faced man, a high feeder, who looked as new as the church and said the virtues of Father Connell were reducing his flesh. That would seem to be no harm; but Father Harra meant it humorously. Father Connell had stumped about too much among the workmen in the cold and wet, else there had been no need of his dying at eighty-eight. His tall black hat became a relic that hung in the tiring room, and he cackled no more in his thin voice the noble Latin of the service. Peace to his soul! The last order he wrote related to the position of the Christ figure and the inscription, “Come unto me, weary and heavy-laden: I will give you rest.” But the figure was not in place till the mid-December following.

And it was the day before Christmas that Father Harra had a fine service, with his boy choir and all; and Chubby Locke sang a solo, “Angels ever bright and fair,” that was all dripping with tears, so to speak. Chubby Locke was an imp too. All around the altar the candles were lighted, and there hung a cluster of gas jets over the head of the Christ figure on the edge of the south transept. So fine it was that Father Harra came out of his room into the aisle (when the people were gone, saying how fine it was, and the sexton was putting out the gas here and there), to walk up and down and think about it, especially how he should keep up with the virtues of Father Connell. Duskier and duskier it grew, as the candles went out cluster by cluster till only those in the south transept were left; and Dennis, coming there, stopped and grunted.

“What!” said Father Harra.

“It's asleep he is,” said the sexton. “It's a b'y, yer riverence.”

“Why, so it is! He went to sleep during the service. H'm—well—they often do that, Dennis.”

“Anyways he don't belong here,” said Dennis.

“Think so? I don't know about that. Wait a bit. I don't know about that Dennis.”

The boy lay curled up on the seat—a newsboy, by the papers that had slipped from his arms. But he did not look businesslike, and he did not suggest the advantages of being poor in America. One does not become a capitalist or president by going to church and to sleep in the best of business hours, from four to six, when the streets are stirring with men on their way to dinners, cigars and evening papers. The steps of St. Catherine's are not a bad place to sell papers after Vespers, and one might as well go in, to be sure, and be warm while the service lasts; only, as I said, if one falls asleep, one does not become a capitalist or president immediately. Father Harra considered, and Dennis waited respectfully.

“It's making plans I am against your natural rest, Dennis. I'm that inconsiderate of your feelings to think of keeping St. Catherine's open this night. And why? Look ye, Dennis. St. Catherine's is getting itself consecrated these days, being new, and of course—But I tell ye, Dennis, it's a straight church doctrine that the blessings of the poor are a good assistance to the holy wather.”

“An' me wid children of me own to be missin' their father this Christmas Eve!” began Dennis indignantly.

“Who wouldn't mind, the little villains, if their father had another dollar of Christmas morning to buy 'em presents.”

“Ah, well,” said the sexton, “yer riverence is that persuadin'.”

“It's plain enough for ye to see yourself, Dennis, though thick-headed somewhat. There you are: 'Come unto me, weary and heavy-laden;' and here he is. Plain enough. And who are the weary and heavy-laden in this city?”

“Yer riverence will be meanin' everybody,” chuckled Dennis.

“Think so? Rich and poor and all? Stuff! I don't believe it. Not to-night. It'll be the outcasts, I'm thinking, Dennis. Come on.”

“An' the b'y, yer riverence?”

“The what? Oh, why, yes, yes. He's all right. I don't see anything the matter with him. He's come.”

It was better weather to go with the wind than against it, for the snow drove in gritty particles, and the sidewalks made themselves disagreeable and apt to slip out from under a person. Little spurts of snow danced up St. Catherine's roofs and went off the ridgepoles in puffs. It ought to snow on Christmas Eve; but it rightly should snow with better manners and not be so cold. The groceries closed early. Freiburger, the saloon man, looked over the curtains of his window.

“I don't know vat for Fater Harra tack up dings dis time by his kirch door, 'Come—come in here.' Himmel! der Irishman!”

Father Harra turned in to his supper, and thought how he would trouble Father Conner's reputation for enterprise and what a fine bit of constructive ability himself was possessed of.

The great central door of St. Catherine's stood open, so that the drift blew in and piled in windrows on the cold floor of the vestibule. The tall front of the church went up into the darkness, pointing to no visible stars; but over the doors two gas jets flickered across the big sign they use for fairs at the parochial school. “Come in here.” The vestibule was dark, barring another gas jet over a side door, with another sign, “Come in here,” and within the great church was dark as well, except for a cluster over the Christ figure. That was all; but Father Harra thought it a neat symbol, looking toward those who go from meagre light to light through the darkness.

Little noises were in the church all night far up in the pitch darkness of rafter and buttress, as if people were whispering and crying softly to one another. Now and again, too, the swing door would open and remain so for a moment, suspicious, hesitating. But what they did, or who they were that opened it, could hardly be told in the dusk and distance. Dennis went to sleep in a chair by the chancel rail, and did not care what they did or who they were, granted they kept away from the chancel.

How the wind blew!—and the snow tapped impatiently at stained windows with a multitude of little fingers. But if the noises among the rafters were not merely echoes of the crying and calling wind without, if any presences moved and whispered there, and looked down on flat floor and straight lines of pews, they must have seen the Christ figure, with welcoming hands, dominant by reason of the light about it; and, just on the edge of the circle of light, shapeless things stretched on cushions of pews, and motionless or stirring uneasily. Something now came dimly up the aisle from the swing door, stopped at a pew, and hesitated.

“Git out!” growled a hoarse voice. “Dis my bunk.”

The intruder gave a nervous giggle. “Begawd!” muttered the hoarse voice. “It's a lady!”

Another voice said something angrily. “Well,” said the first, “it ain't behavin' nice to come into me boodwer.”

The owner of the giggle had slipped away and disappeared in a distant pew. In another pew to the right of the aisle a smaller shadow whispered to another:

“Jimmy, that's a statoo up there.”

“Who?”

“That. I bet 'e's a king.”

“Aw, no 'e ain't. Kings has crowns an' wallups folks.”

“Gorry! What for?”

“I don' know.”

The other sighed plaintively. “I thought 'e might be a king.”

The rest were mainly silent. Some one had a bad cough. Once a sleeper rolled from the seat and fell heavily to the floor. There was an oath or two, a smothered laugh, and the distant owner of the giggle used it nervously. The last was an uncanny sound. The wakened sleeper objected to it. He said he would “like to get hold of her,” and then lay down cautiously on his cushion.

Architects have found that their art is cunning to play tricks with them; whence come whispering galleries, comers of echoes, roofs that crush the voice of the speaker, and roofs that enlarge it. Father Connell gave no orders to shape the roofs of St. Catherine's, that on stormy nights so many odd noises might congregate there, whispering, calling, murmuring, now over the chancel, now the organ, now far up in the secret high places of the roof, now seeming to gather in confidence above the Christ figure and the circle of sleepers; or, if one vaguely imagined some inquisitively errant beings moving overhead, it would seem that newcomers constantly entered, to whom it had all to be explained.

But against that eager motion in the darkness above the Christ figure below was bright in his long garment, and quiet and secure. The cluster of gas jets over his head made light but a little distance around, then softened the dusk for another distance, and beyond seemed not to touch the darkness at all. The dusk was a debatable space. The sleepers all lay in the debatable space. They may have sought it by instinct; but the more one looked at them the more they seemed like dull, half-animate things, over whom the light and the darkness made their own compromises and the people up in the roof their own comments.

The clock in the steeple struck the hours; in the church the tremble was felt more than the sound was heard. The chimes each hour started their message, “Good will and peace;” but the wind went after it and howled it down, and the snow did not cease its petulance at the windows.

The clock in the steeple struck five. The man with the hoarse voice sat up, leaned over the back of the seat and touched his neighbor, who rose noiselessly, a huge fat man and unkempt.

“Time to slope,” whispered the first, motioning toward the chancel.

The other followed his motion.

“What's up there?”

“You're ignorance, you are. That's where they gives the show. There's pickin's there.”

The two slipped out and stole up the aisle with a peculiar noiseless tread. Even Fat Bill's step could not be heard a rod away. The aisle entered the circle of light before the Christ figure; but the two thieves glided through without haste and without looking up. The smaller, in front, drew up at the end of the aisle, and Fat Bill ran into him. Dennis sat in his chair against the chancel rail, asleep.

“Get onto his whiskers, Bill. Mebbe you'll have to stuff them whiskers down his throat.”

There was a nervous giggle behind them. Fat Bill shot into a pew, dragging his comrade after him, and crouched down. “It ain't no use,” he whispered, shaking the other angrily. “Church business is bad luck. I alius said so. What's for them blemed noises all night? How'd come they stick that thing up there with the gas over it? What for'd they leave the doors open, an' tell ye to come in, an' keep their damn devils gigglin' around? 'Taint straight I won't stand it.”

“It's only a woman, Bill,” said the other patiently.

He rose on his knees and looked over the back of the seat. “'Tain't straight. I won't stand it.”

“We won't fight, Bill. We'll get out, if you say so.”

The owner of the giggle was sitting up, as they glided back, Fat Bill leading.

“I'll smash yer face,” the smaller man said to her.

Bill turned and grabbed his collar.

“You come along.”

The woman stared stupidly after, till the swing door closed behind them. Then she put on her hat, decorated with too many disorderly flowers. Most of the sleepers were wakened. The wind outside had died in the night, and the church was quite still. A man in a dress suit and overcoat sat up in a pew beneath a window, and stared about him. His silk hat lay on the floor. He leaned over the back of the seat and spoke to his neighbor, a tramp in checked trousers.

“How'd I g-get here?” he asked thickly.

“Don' know, pardner,” said the tramp cheerfully. “Floated in, same as me?” He caught sight of the white tie and shirt front. “Maybe you'd give a cove a shiner to steady ye out They don't give breakfasts with lodgin's here.”

The woman with the giggle and the broken-down flowers on her hat went out next; then a tall, thin man with a beard and a cough; the newsboy with his papers shuffled after, his shoes being too large; then a lame man—something seemed the matter with his hip; and a decent-looking woman, who wore a faded shawl over her head and kept it drawn across her face—she seemed ashamed to be there, as if it did not appear to her a respectable place; last, two boys, one of them small, but rather stunted than very young. He said:

“'E ain't a king, is 'e, Jimmy? You don' know who 'e is, do you, Jimmy?”

“Naw.”

“Say, Jimmy, it was warm, warn't it?”

Dennis came down the aisle, put out the gas, and began to brush the cushions. The clock struck a quarter of six, and Father Harra came in.

“Christmas, Dennis, Christmas! H'm—anybody been here? What did they think of it?”

Dennis rubbed his nose sheepishly.

“They wint to shleep, sor, an'—an' thin they wint out.”

Father Harra looked up at the Christ figure and stroked his red chin.

“I fancied they might see the point,” he said slowly. “Well, well, I hope they were warm.”

The colored lights from the east oriel fell over the Christ figure and gave it a cheerful look; and from other windows blue and yellow and magical deep-sea tints floated in the air, as if those who had whispered unseen in the darkness were now wandering about, silent but curiously visible.

“Yer riverince,” said Dennis, “will not be forgettin' me dollar.”