He coughed, and looked up at the sky.
"A splendid night, David," he said softly.

"A splendid night!" He spoke in a strange, quiet voice that made David turn.

The Little Missioner was facing the moon.

He was gazing off into that wonder-world of forests and snow and stars and moonlight in a fixed and steady gaze, and it seemed to David that he aged, and shrank into smaller form, and that his shoulders drooped as if under a weight.

And all at once David saw in his face what he had seen before when in the coach--a forgetfulness of all things but one, the lifting of a strange curtain, the baring of a soul; and for a few moments Father Roland stood with his face turned to the light of the skies, as if preoccupied by an all-pervading and hopeless grief..