Page:The Great Secret.djvu/290

274 A month and a day exactly after she had commenced her thirty days' prayer, she shut up the prayer book and arranged the cavern as if it had been a chapel, decorating it as well as she could with her limited means.

"The Blessed Virgin will answer our prayers to-night or to-morrow, Anatole, I am sure."

Her beauty had increased during these thirty days, even if she was paler and softer in expression. Anatole looked on her with a man's pride and satisfaction, particularly man in his free and savage state as Anatole then was.

They had finished supper and were resting on their skins when silently the outer curtain was drawn aside and a stranger entered—a pale-faced man, clean shaven, with the patch on his crown which expressed his order.

"God keep all here to-night," he said, as he stood before them, while both Anatole and Eugene, recognising his profession, fell on their knees before him without considering how he had come.

"Welcome, holy father."

"Will you grant me shelter, for the night is cold, and I have wandered far."

Eugene rose and bustled about to get supper for the stranger, while Anatole waited on his explanation.

"I saw a light as I passed and ventured, thinking that other wrecked souls were on this island; is it not so?"

"Yes, father, we have been here over a year."

"I have not been so long, yet, never fear, a ship will come by and by. You are husband and wife?"