Ledwith was dying in profound depression, like most brave souls, whose success has been partial, or whose failure has been absolute. This mournful ending to a brave, unselfish life seemed to Arthur pitiful and monstrous. A mere breathing-machine like himself had enjoyed a stimulating vengeance for the failure of one part of his life. Oh, how sweet had been that vengeance! The draught had not yet reached the bottom of the cup! His cause for the moment a ruin, dragged down with Fenianism; his great enemy stronger, more glorious, and more pitiless than when he had first raised his hand against her injustice; now the night had closed in upon Ledwith, not merely the bitter night of sickness and death and failure, but that more savage night of despondency, which steeps all human sorrow in the black, polluted atmosphere of hell. For such a sufferer the heart of Arthur Dillon opened as wide as the gates of heaven. Oh, had he not known what it is to suffer so, without consolation!

He was like a son to Owen Ledwith.

Every plan born in the poetic and fertile brain of the patriot he took oath to carry out; he vowed his whole life to the cause of Ireland; and he consoled Owen for apparent failure by showing him that he had not altogether failed, since a man, young, earnest, determined, and wealthy should take up the great work just where he dropped it. Could any worker ask more of life? A hero should go to his eternity with lofty joy, leaving his noble example to the mean world, a reproach to the despicable among rulers, a star in the night to the warriors of justice.

In Honora her father did not find the greatest comfort. His soul was of the earth and human liberty was his day-star; her soul rose above that great human good to the freedom of heaven. Her heart ached for him, that he should be going out of life with only human consolation. The father stood in awe of an affection, which at the same time humbled and exalted him; she had never loved man or woman like him; he was next to God in that virginal heart, for with all her love of country, the father had the stronger hold on her. Too spiritual for him, her sublime faith did not cheer him. Yet when they looked straight into each other's eyes with the consciousness of what was coming, mutual anguish terribly probed their love. He had no worry for her.

"She has the best of friends," he said to Arthur, "she is capable, and trained to take care of herself handsomely; but these things will not be of any use. She will go to the convent."

"Not if Lord Constantine can hinder it," Arthur said bluntly.

"I would like to see her in so exalted and happy a sphere as Lord Constantine could give her. But I am convinced that the man is not born who can win the love of this child of mine. Sir Galahad might, but not the stuff of which you and I are made."

"I believe you," said Arthur.

Honora herself told him of her future plans, as they sat with the sick man after a trying evening, when for some hours the end seemed near. The hour invited confidences, and like brother and sister at the sick-bed of a beloved parent they exchanged them. When she had finished telling him how she had tried to do her duty to her father, and to her country, and how she had laid aside her idea of the convent for their sake, but would now take up her whole duty to God by entering a sisterhood, he said casually:

"It seems to me these three duties work together; and when you were busiest with your father and your country, then were you most faithful to God."

"Very true," she replied, looking up with surprise. "Obedience is better than sacrifice."

"Take care that you are not deceiving yourself, Honora. Which would cause more pain, to give up your art and your cause, or to give up the convent?"

"To give up the convent," she replied promptly.

"That looks to me like selfishness," he said gently. "There are many nuns in the convents working for the wretched and helping the poor and praying for the oppressed, while only a few women are devoted directly to the cause of freedom. It strikes me that you descend when you retire from a field of larger scope to one which narrows your circle and diminishes your opportunities. I am not criticizing the nun's life, but simply your personal scheme."

"And you think I descend?" she murmured with a little gasp of pain. "Why, how can that be?"

"You are giving up the work, the necessary work, which few women are doing, to take up a work in which many women are engaged," he answered, uncertain of his argument, but quite sure of his intention. "You lose great opportunities to gain small ones, purely personal. That's the way it looks to me."

With wonderful cunning he unfolded his arguments in the next few weeks. He appealed to her love for her father, her wish to see his work continued; he described his own helplessness, very vaguely though, in carrying out schemes with which he was unacquainted, and to which he was vowed; he mourned over the helpless peoples of the world, for whom a new community was needed to fight, as the Knights of St. John fought for Christendom; and he painted with delicate satire that love of ease which leads heroes to desert the greater work for the lesser on the plea of the higher life. Selfishly she sought rest, relief for the taxing labors, anxieties, and journeys of fifteen years, and not the will of God, as she imagined. Was he conscious of his own motives? Did he discover therein any selfishness? Who can say?

He discoursed at the same time to Owen, and in the same fashion. Ledwith felt that his dreams were patch work beside the rainbow visions of this California miner, who had the mines which make the wildest dreams come true sometimes. The wealthy enthusiast might fall, however, into the hands of the professional patriot, who would bleed him to death in behalf of paper schemes. To whom could he confide him? Honora! It had always been Honora with him, who could do nothing without her. He did not wish to hamper her in the last moment, as he had hampered her since she had first planned her own life.

It was even a pleasant thought for him, to think of his faithful child living her beautiful, quiet, convent life, after the fatigues and pilgrimages of years, devoted to his memory, mingling his name with her prayers, innocent of any other love than for him and her Creator. Yes, she must be free as the air after he died. However, the sick are not masters of their emotions. A great dread and a great anguish filled him. Would it be his fate to lose Arthur to Ireland by consideration for others? But he loved her so! How could he bind her in bonds at the very moment of their bitter separation? He would not do it! He would not do it! He fought down his own longing until he woke up in a sweat of terror one night, and called to her loudly, fearing that he would die before he exacted from her the last promise. He must sacrifice all for his country, even the freedom of his child.

"Honora," he cried, "was I ever faithless to Erin? Did I ever hesitate when it was a question of money, or life, or danger, or suffering for her sake?"

"Never, father dear," she said, soothing him like a child.

"I have sinned now, then. For your sake I have sinned. I wished to leave you free when I am gone, although I saw you were still necessary to Eire. Promise me, my child, that you will delay a little after I am gone, before entering the convent; that you will make sure beforehand that Erin has no great need of you ... just a month or a year ... any delay——"

"As long as you please, father," she said quietly. "Make it five years if you will——"

"No, no," he interrupted with anguish in his throat. "I shall never demand again from you the sacrifices of the past. What may seem just to you will be enough. I die almost happy in leaving Arthur Dillon to carry on with his talent and his money the schemes of which I only dreamed. But I fear the money patriots will get hold of him and cheat him of his enthusiasm and his money together. If you were by to let him know what was best to be done—that is all I ask of you——"

"A year at least then, father dear! What is time to you and me that we should be stingy of the only thing we ever really possessed."

"And now I lose even that," with a long sigh.

Thus gently and naturally Arthur gained his point.

Monsignor came often, and then oftener when Owen's strength began to fail rapidly. The two friends in Irish politics had little agreement, but in the gloom of approaching death they remembered only their friendship. The priest worked vainly to put Owen into a proper frame of mind before his departure for judgment. He had made his peace with the Church, and received the last rites like a believer, but with the coldness of him who receives necessities from one who has wronged him. He was dying, not like a Christian, but like the pagan patriot who has failed: only the shades awaited him when he fled from the darkness of earthly shame. They sat together one March afternoon facing the window and the declining sun. To the right another window gave them a good view of the beautiful cathedral, whose twin spires, many turrets, and noble walls shone blue and golden in the brilliant light.

"I love to look at it from this elevation," said Monsignor, who had just been discoursing on the work of his life. "In two years, just think, the most beautiful temple in the western continent will be dedicated."

"The money that has gone into it would have struck a great blow for Erin," said Ledwith with a bitter sigh.

"So much of it as escaped the yawning pockets of the numberless patriots," retorted Monsignor dispassionately. "The money would not have been lost in so good a cause, but its present use has done more for your people than a score of the blows which you aim at England."

"Claim everything in sight while you are at it," said Owen. "In God's name what connection has your gorgeous cathedral with any one's freedom?"

"Father dear, you are exciting yourself," Honora broke in, but neither heeded her.

"Christ brought us true freedom," said Monsignor, "and the Church alone teaches, practises, and maintains it."

"A fine example is provided by Ireland, where to a dead certainty freedom was lost because the Church had too unnatural a hold upon the people."

"What was lost on account of the faith will be given back again with compound interest. Political and military movements have done much for Ireland in fifty years; but the only real triumphs, universal, brilliant, enduring, significant, leading surely up to greater things, have been won by the Irish faith, of which that cathedral, shining so gloriously in the sun this afternoon, is both a result and a symbol."

"I believe you will die with that conviction," Ledwith said in wonder.

"I wish you could die with the same, Owen," replied Monsignor tenderly.

They fell silent for a little under the stress of sudden feeling.

"How do men reason themselves into such absurdities?" Owen asked himself.

"You ought to know. You have done it often enough," said the priest tartly.

Then both laughed together, as they always did when the argument became personal.

"Do you know what Livingstone and Bradford and the people whom they represent think of that temple?" said Monsignor impressively.

"Oh, their opinions!" Owen snorted.

"They are significant," replied the priest. "These two leaders would give the price of the building to have kept down or destroyed the spirit which undertook and carried out the scheme. They have said to themselves many times in the last twenty years, while that temple rose slowly but gloriously into being, what sort of a race is this, so despised and ill-treated, so poor and ignorant, that in a brief time on our shores can build the finest temple to God which this country has yet seen? What will the people, to whom we have described this race as sunk in papistical stupidity, debased, unenterprising, think, when they gaze on this absolute proof of our mendacity?"

Ledwith, in silence, took a second look at the shining walls and towers.

"Owen, your generous but short-sighted crowd have fought England briefly and unsuccessfully a few times on the soil of Ireland ... but the children of the faith have fought her with church, and school, and catechism around the globe. Their banner, around which they fought, was not the banner of the Fenians but the banner of Christ. What did you do for the scattered children of the household? Nothing, but collect their moneys. While the great Church followed them everywhere with her priests, centered them about the temple, and made them the bulwark of the faith, the advance-guard, in many lands. Here in America, and in all the colonies of England, in Scotland, even in England itself, wherever the Irish settled, the faith took root and flourished; the faith which means death to the English heresy, and to English power as far as it rests upon the heresy."

"The faith kept the people together, scattered all over the world. It organized them, it trained them, it kept them true to the Christ preached by St. Patrick; it built the fortress of the temple, and the rampart of the school; it kept them a people apart, it kept them civilized, saved them from inevitable apostasy, and founded a force from which you collect your revenues for battle with your enemies; a force which fights England all over the earth night and day, in legislatures, in literature and journalism, in social and commercial life ... why, man, you are a fragment, a mere fragment, you and your warriors, of that great fight which has the world for an audience and the English earths for its stage."

"When did you evolve this new fallacy?" said Ledwith hoarsely.

"You have all been affected with the spirit of the anti-Catholic revolution in Europe, whose cry is that the Church is the enemy of liberty; yours, that it has been no friend to Irish liberty. Take another look at that cathedral. When you are dead, and many others that will live longer, that church will deliver its message to the people who pass: 'I am the child of the Catholic faith and the Irish; the broad shoulders of America waited for a simple, poor, cast-out people, to dig me from the earth and shape me into a thing of beauty, a glory of the new continent; I myself am not new; I am of that race which in Europe speaks in divine language to you pigmies of the giants that lived in ancient days; I am a new bond between the old continent and the new, between the old order and the new; I speak for the faith of the past; I voice the faith of the hour; the hands that raised me are not unskilled and untrained; from what I am judge, ye people, of what stuff my builders are made.' And around the world, in all the capitals, in the great cities, of the English-speaking peoples, temples of lesser worth and beauty, are speaking in the same strain."

Honora anxiously watched her father. A new light shone upon him, a new emotion disturbed him; perhaps that old hardness within was giving way. Ledwith had the poetic temperament, and the philosopher's power of generalization. A hint could open a grand horizon before him, and the cathedral in its solemn beauty was the hint. Of course, he could see it all, blind as he had been before. The Irish revolution worked fitfully, and exploded in a night, its achievement measured by the period of a month; but this temple and its thousand sisters lived on doing their good work in silence, fighting for the truth without noise or conspiracy.

"And this is the glory of the Irish," Monsignor continued, "this is the fact which fills me with pride, American as I am, in the race whose blood I own; they have preserved the faith for the great English-speaking world. Already the new principle peculiar to that faith has begun its work in literature, in art, in education, in social life. Heresy allowed the Christ to be banished from all the departments of human activity, except the home and the temple. Christ is not in the schools of the children, nor in the books we read, nor in the pictures and sculptures of our studios, nor in our architecture, even of the churches, nor in our journalism, any more than in the market-place and in the government. These things are purely pagan, or worthless composites. It looks as if the historian of these times, a century or two hence, will have hard work to fitly describe the Gesta Hibernicorum, when this principle of Christianity will have conquered the American world as it conquered ancient Europe. I tell you, Owen," and he strode to the window with hands outstretched to the great building, "in spite of all the shame and suffering endured for His sake, God has been very good to your people, He is heaping them with honors. As wide as is the power of England, it is no wider than the influence of the Irish faith. Stubborn heresy is doomed to fall before the truth which alone can set men free and keep them so."

Ledwith had begun to tremble, but he said never a word.

"I am prouder to have had a share in the building of that temple," Monsignor continued, "than to have won a campaign against the English. This is a victory, not of one race over another, but of the faith over heresy, truth over untruth. It will be the Christ-like glory of Ireland to give back to England one day the faith which a corrupt king destroyed, for which we have suffered crucifixion. No soul ever loses by climbing the cross with Christ."

Ledwith gave a sudden cry, and raised his hands to heaven, but grew quiet at once.

The priest watched contentedly the spires of his cathedral.

"You have touched heart and reason together," Honora whispered.

Ledwith remained a long time silent, struggling with a new spirit. At last he turned the wide, frank eyes on his friend and victor.

"I am conquered, Monsignor."

"Not wholly yet, Owen."

"I have been a fool, a foolish fool,—not to have seen and understood."

"And your folly is not yet dead. You are dying in sadness and despair almost, when you should go to eternity in triumph."

"I go in triumph! Alas! if I could only be blotted out with my last breath, and leave neither grave nor memory, it would be happiness. Why do you say, 'triumph'?"

"Because you have been true to your country with the fidelity of a saint. That's enough. Besides you leave behind you the son born of your fidelity to carry on your work——"

"God bless that noble son," Owen cried.

"And a daughter whose prayers will mount from the nun's cell, to bless your cause. If you could but go from her resigned!"

"How I wish that I might. I ought to be happy, just for leaving two such heirs, two noble hostages to Ireland. I see my error. Christ is the King, and no man can better His plans for men. I surrender to Him."

"But your submission is only in part. You are not wholly conquered."

"Twice have you said that," Owen complained, raising his heavy eyes in reproach.

"Love of country is not the greatest love."

"No, love of the race, of humanity, is more."

"And the love of God is more than either. With all their beauty, what do these abstract loves bring us? The country we love can give us a grave and a stone. Humanity crucifies its redeemers. Wolsey summed up the matter: 'Had I but served my God with half the zeal with which I served my king, He would not in mine age, have left me naked to mine enemies.'"

He paused to let his words sink into Ledwith's mind.

"Owen, you are leaving the world oppressed by the hate of a lifetime, the hate ingrained in your nature, the fatal gift of persecutor and persecuted from the past."

"And I shall never give that up," Owen declared, sitting up and fixing his hardest look on the priest. "I shall never forget Erin's wrongs, nor Albion's crimes. I shall carry that just and honorable hate beyond the grave. Oh, you priests!"

"I said you were not conquered. You may hate injustice, but not the unjust. You will find no hate in heaven, only justice. The persecutors and their victims have long been dead, and judged. The welcome of the wretched into heaven, the home of justice and love, wiped out all memory of suffering here, as it will for us all. The justice measured out to their tyrants even you would be satisfied with. Can your hate add anything to the joy of the blessed, or the woe of the lost?"

"Nothing," murmured Owen from the pillow, as his eyes looked afar, wondering at that justice so soon to be measured out to him. "You are again right. Oh, but we are feeble ... but we are foolish ... to think it. What is our hate any more than our justice ... both impotent and ridiculous."

There followed a long pause, then, for Monsignor had finished his argument, and only waited to control his own emotion before saying good-by.

"I die content," said Ledwith with a long restful sigh, coming back to earth, after a deep look into divine power and human littleness. "Bring me to-morrow, and often, the Lord of Justice. I never knew till now that in desiring Justice so ardently, it was He I desired. Monsignor, I die content, without hate, and without despair."

If ever a human creature had a foretaste of heaven it was Honora during the few weeks that followed this happy day. The bitterness in the soul of Owen vanished like a dream, and with it went regret, and vain longing, and the madness which at odd moments sprang from these emotions. His martyrdom, so long and ferocious, would end in the glory of a beautiful sunset, the light of heaven in his heart, shining in his face. He lay forever beyond the fire of time and injustice.

Every morning Honora prepared the little altar in the sick-room, and Monsignor brought the Blessed Sacrament. Arthur answered the prayers and gazed with awe upon the glorified face of the father, with something like anger upon the exalted face of the daughter; for the two were gone suddenly beyond him. Every day certain books provided by Monsignor were read to the dying man by the daughter or the son; describing the migration of the Irish all over the English-speaking world, their growth to consequence and power. Owen had to hear the figures of this growth, see and touch the journals printed by the scattered race, and to hear the editorials which spoke their success, their assurance, their convictions, their pride.

Then he laughed so sweetly, so naturally, chuckled so mirthfully that Honora had to weep and thank God for this holy mirthfulness, which sounded like the spontaneous, careless, healthy mirth of a boy. Monsignor came evenings to explain, interpret, put flesh and life into the reading of the day with his vivid and pointed comment. Ledwith walked in wonderland. "The hand of God is surely there," was his one saying. The last day of his pilgrimage he had a long private talk with Arthur. They had indeed become father and son, and their mutual tenderness was deep.

Honora knew from the expression of the two men that a new element had entered into her father's happiness.

"I free you from your promise, my child," said Ledwith, "my most faithful, most tender child. It is the glory of men that the race is never without such children as you. You are free from any bond. It is my wish that you accept your release."

She accepted smiling, to save him from the stress of emotion. Then he wished to see the cathedral in the light of the afternoon sun, and Arthur opened the door of the sick-room. The dying man could see from his pillow the golden spires, and the shining roof, that spoke to him so wonderfully of the triumph of his race in a new land, the triumph which had been built up in the night, unseen, uncared for, unnoticed.

"God alone has the future," he said.

Once he looked at Honora, once more, with burning eyes, that never could look enough on that loved child. With his eyes on the great temple, smiling, he died. They thought he had fallen asleep in his weakness. Honora took his head in her arms, and Arthur Dillon stood beside her and wept.