Page:Flute and Violin and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances.djvu/164

146 sterile vigils and fasts and prayers. Oh, we should change places, he and I! I should be in there and he out here. He should be lying here by your side, looking up into your face, loving you as I have loved you, and winning you as I never can. Oh, Madeline, Madeline, Madeline!"

The rapid, broken utterance suddenly ceased.

In the deep stillness that followed, Father Palemon heard the sound of a low sob and a groan.

He had sat all this time rivetted to the spot, and as though turned into stone. He had hardly breathed. A bright lizard gliding from out a crevice in the wall had sunned itself in a little rift of sunshine between his feet. A bee from the honeysuckles had alighted unnoticed upon his hand. Others sounds had died away from his ears, which were strained to catch the last echoes of these strange voices from another world.

Now all at once across the gardens came the stroke of a bell summoning to instant prayer. Why had it suddenly grown so loud and terrible? He started up. He forgot priestly gravity and ran—fairly ran, head long and in a straight course, heedless of the tender plants that were being crushed beneath his feet. From another part of the garden an aged brother, his eye attracted by the sunlight glancing on a bright moving object, paused while training a grape-vine and watched with amazement the disorderly figure as it fled. As he ran on, the skirts of his cowl, which he had forgotten to tie up, came down. When at last he reached the door of the chapel and stooped to unroll them, he discovered that they had been draggled over the dirt and stained against the bruised weeds until they were