VESPERS.

After their audiences were ended, they shambled away; the Sisters had disappeared, and the church was empty but for one figure, standing near the door. St. John gave an inquiring look, and made a step forward. The lady, for it was a lady, seemed to hesitate, and her attitude and movements betrayed great agitation. Some late rays of the afternoon sun came piercing down through a high-up, colored window. Missy looked down with keen interest upon the two; it was another scene in her brother's life.

"You are too young for the care of penitents like that, my dear St. John," she said to herself, sententiously. For the lady was pretty, more than pretty, and young and graceful.

She came forward rapidly, her resolution once made, and stood before St. John, half way down the aisle. He did not look very young, thanks to its being "always fast and vigil, always watch and prayer," with him; his peculiar dress made him seem taller than he really was, almost gaunt. His face had a sobered, worn look, but an expression of great sweetness. He carried his head a little forward, and his eyes, which were almost always on the ground, he raised with a sort of gentle inquiry, an appealing, wondering interest, to the face before him. Because, to St. John, people were "souls," and he was always thinking of their eternal state. As to a lawyer, those he meets are possible clients, and to a doctor, patients, so to this other professional mind all were included in his hopes of penitence or progress. He raised his eyes to the new-comer's face, and Missy saw the start he gave, and the great change that took place in his expression. It was as if he were, for a moment, sharply assaulted with some strong pain. He put out his hand, and laid hold of the wooden railing of a prayer desk near him, as if to steady himself.

The lady, meanwhile, had not been too agitated to notice his emotion. She eagerly scanned his face, stretched out her hand to him timidly, then drew it back and clasped it in the other, and said something pleadingly to him, looking up to him with tears. Seeing she did not make him look at her again, and that he was rapidly gaining self-control, she flushed, drew back, with a manner almost angry. But in a moment, some humiliating recollection seemed to sweep over her mind and blot out her involuntary pride. Her face darkened, and her mouth quivered as she said, quite loud enough for Missy, in her loft, to hear:

"The only right I have to come to you, is that the wretched man whom you have befriended, and whom you are preparing for the gallows, is the man—to whom I am married."

St. John started again, and said—? The name Missy did not catch. The stranger assented, and went on speaking bitterly, and with a voice broken by agitation. "He tells me he has confessed to you. I do not believe it—I do not believe he would tell the truth, even upon the gallows. His perfidy to my poor sister, ruining her, breaking her heart, destroying her chance of being happy in a good marriage—to me enticing me away from you—and then dragging me through shame and suffering that I cannot even bear to think of—his low vices—his heartless frauds—has he told you all these?—You used to be young. I should think you would soon be old enough if you have to hear many such stories. I should think you would be tired of living in a world that had such things done in it."

St. John did not answer. His eyes never now left the ground.

"I am tired of it," she cried, with tears. "I am tired and sick of life. I want to die, and only I don't dare. Sometimes I come here to the church and the music and the preaching seem to make me ashamed of my wicked thoughts; but it doesn't stay, and I go back to all my miseries and I am no better. I don't know what has kept me from the worst kind of a life. I don't know what keeps me from the worst kind of a death. I have sometimes wondered if it wasn't that you pray for me—among your enemies, I suppose, if you do."

There was a pause, and then she went on: "Last Sunday night I heard you preach; I had only heard your voice reading the prayers before that. Ever since, I have wanted to speak to you to ask you about something that you said."

Then St. John lifted his head and said, in a voice that was notably calm, "I hope you will come here often, and, if you will let me, I will ask Father Ellis to talk with you and to give you counsel. He has had great experience, and he will help you."

Missy listened breathless for the words that came at last, after a succession of emotions had passed over her face. "You have not forgiven me!" she said. "Is that being good and holy, as you teach? You will not talk to me and help me yourself, but send me to some one I don't know and who won't understand. Why won't you forgive me? Heaven knows I have been sorry enough and repented enough!"

A lovely smile passed over St. John's face, one would almost have said there was a shade of amusement in it, but it was all gone in a moment, and the habitual seriousness returned.

"I had never thought of any question of forgiveness," he said. "Be assured of it in any case."

"Then why," she hurried on, keenly searching his face, "why will you not let me speak to you? Why will you not teach me, and help me, as you say Father Ellis would do?"

"Because it is not my part of the work. He has more experience."

"But you teach Armand. You spend hours in the prison. You have the direction of souls there."

"That is a different work," he said, simply.

"Then," she exclaimed, passionately, "since you refuse me I will go away. I have been hoping all this time for help from you. If you won't give it, God knows, that is the end. I will not speak to strangers and lay open my miserable past. I shall not listen to my conscience any more. I will get out of my wretchedness any way I can. I might have known that churches and priests would not do me any good."

"I should be sorry," he said, calmly, "to think you had come to such a resolution. No one person is likely to do you more good than another. If the intention of your heart is right, God can help you through one person as well as through another."

"You distrust me," she said. "I suppose I ought not to wonder at it, but I did not think men as good as you could be so hard. Why do you doubt that the intention of my heart is right?"

"I have not said that I doubted it. I have only thought that if it were, you would be glad to accept any means laid before you, of getting the assistance that you feel you need."

The girl, for she looked only that, buried her face in her hands, and a faint sob echoed through the empty church. "It would be so much easier to speak to you; it's so hard," she murmured, "to tell a stranger all you've done wrong, and all the miserable things that have happened to you."

"You don't have to tell him all that has happened to you," he said. "You have only to tell him of your sins. Let me add, that the priest to whom I advise you to go, has great sympathy with suffering, and is very gentle."

Missy hardly breathed, such was her interest in the scene before her. She took in all the complication, the shock that seeing the woman for whom he had had such strong feeling, had given St. John, the sorrow of finding her bound to the miserable criminal, whose last hours he was trying to purify, the fear of repulsing her, and the danger of ministering to her. At first she had been overwhelmed with alarm for him, the grace and beauty of the young creature was so unusual, her desire to re-establish relations of intimacy so unmistakable. But something, she did not know what, reassured her. Perhaps it was the faint gleam of a smile on his face, when she asked him to forgive her; as if he had said, "You ask me to forgive you for doing me the greatest favor you could possibly have done." Perhaps it was that she felt intuitively the inferiority of the woman's nature, that she knew St. John had been growing away from her, leaving her behind with such strides that she could not touch him. He was beyond danger from silken hair or peach-bloom cheeks. If danger came to him, it would be in a subtler form. She wondered at herself, feeling so confident; she felt very sorry for the girl, not afraid of her. She looked back at the past, and said to herself, "This pink-faced, long-lashed young thing has held a great deal in her hands, but she holds it no more." Her sin and folly turned more than one life into a new channel. St. John's, his mother's, Missy's own, what marks they bore of her flippant treachery! She tried to picture to herself how they would have been living, if, on that October night, so long ago, St. John had brought her home, instead of coming alone, with his ashy, dreadful face. If he had married her, and come to live at Yellowcoats, perhaps, or near them. Ah! perhaps they would all have been in the dear home. Would it have been better? Looking at St. John, and looking at her, with the appreciation that she had of her character from those few moments—would it have been better? No, it would not have been better. Bitter as this change had been to her, Missy knew in her heart it would not have been better. She knew St. John might well smile at the idea of forgiving her, and she herself, though she did not smile, could thank her, as she had said she thanked her, when she stood by the mother's sleepless bed that night and heard the story.

There are some things that we cannot find words for, even in our thoughts. She could not tell why, but she knew as well as if she had spelled it out of Worcester and Webster that it was better for them all to be living this life and not the old. She would have fain not thought so, but she was convicted. The scene passing in the aisle below her, a year ago, would have filled her with alarm, and have given her assurance that her predictions were to be fulfilled. Now, in these bare walls, in this dim house, "this life of pleasure's death," she felt how powerless were such temptations, how different the plane on which they stood. It was all to be felt, not explained. The young creature below her, turning with a late devotion to the man who had outgrown her, still "blindly with her blessedness at strife," could not see or feel it. Missy could pity her, even as she watched her alternate art and artlessness, in trying to arouse in him some of the old feeling. It was all in vain.

When the interview ended, and she went away, Missy watched her brother, as he stood for a while, with his eyes fastened on the ground. Then, with a long sigh, he walked through the church, adjusting a bench here, picking up a prayer book there, and then went and kneeled down before the altar. Missy felt he was not praying for himself, and for power to resist a temptation, but for the soul of the poor undisciplined girl, and the sinful man to whom she was bound.

The end of the story she did not hear at once. Her visit ended about this time, and she only learned later from her mother, that St. John had moved Heaven and earth to get the man pardoned. During the time of suspense, the poor girl had been in a destitute and deplorable state, but with enough good in her to listen to the teaching of Father Ellis and the Sisters. In their house she had found shelter; and during several weeks, Mrs. Varian had had her constantly with her. She never saw St. John again, except in church. The pardon was despaired of, the sickening days that were now growing fewer and fewer, were spent by St. John, mainly with this man, and in the cells of the prison where he lay. The wretched criminal was a coward, and broken down and abject, at the approach of death. His late compunction softened his wife towards him; with one of the Sisters she came often to the prison.

It was hailed with joy, in the still house, when word came, that at the last hour he was pardoned, and that his wife was to meet him on board the vessel that was to take them both to the new life, to which they had pledged themselves. Poor Gabrielle was half reluctant, but she was trying to be good, and was in earnest, in a childish sort of way. St. John looked rather pale and worn after that, and came to Yellowcoats to recruit for a day or two, or perhaps to see after Missy. His work had lain principally among "wicked people," as he had proposed to himself in early days. For some reason he made himself acceptable to prisoners and outcasts. It is possible his great humility had as much to do with it, as his sympathetic nature. At all events, he had had plenty to do, and was quite familiar in prison cells, and at work-house deathbeds. When this man (Armand) had come under his care, he was under sentence of death, and was probably the wickedest of all his wicked people. He was a foreigner, with a hideous past—how hideous, it was likely none but St. John knew. He was condemned to suffer the penalty of the law, for a murder committed in a bar-room fray, possibly one of the lightest of the sins of his life. It was he who had ruined the life of poor little Jay's mother, and plotted the death of her husband. He was a desperado, a dramatic villain, the sort of man respectable people rarely meet, except on the stage or in police courts.

St. John had not suspected the identity of his penitent with the man to whom he owed it, that he wore a girdle round his waist, till the day that Gabrielle came into the church. Poor Gabrielle! It was hard lines for her to be sent off with the cowardly villain, but there seemed no other way to settle the fate of both of them, considering that they were married to each other. A lingering pity filled St. John's heart when he thought of her, and of the terrible fate to which she had bound herself. All this sort of thing is exhausting to the nerves, and no one could begrudge St. John his day and a half of rest by Yellowcoats bay. He and his fellow-workers took very few such days. Their hands were quite full of work, not of a sentimental kind. It takes money to send criminals and their families away to lead new lives in new lands, and money does not always come for the wishing. It takes time and the expenditure of thought to prepare men for the gallows, to get their pardons for them if may be, to smoothe their paths, whichever way they lead; it is good hard work to do these things, and many like them, and takes the flesh off men's bones, and wears out nerves and brains almost as effectually as stocks and speculations But there are men who choose to work in obscurity in a service for which the world offers them no wages—only a very stiff contempt.