CHAPTER XV.
KYRIE ELEISON.
The second Saturday afternoon following was hot and calm.

The lamp burning before the tabernacle in Pere Jerome's little church might have hung with as motionless a flame in the window behind.

The lilies of St.
Joseph's wand, shining in one of the half opened panes, were not more completely at rest than the leaves on tree and vine without, suspended in the slumbering air.

Almost as still, down under the organ-gallery, with a single band of light falling athwart his box from a small door which stood ajar, sat the little priest, behind the lattice of the confessional, silently wiping away the sweat that beaded on his brow and rolled down his face.

At distant intervals the shadow of some one entering softly through the door would obscure, for a moment, the band of light, and an aged crone, or a little boy, or some gentle presence that the listening confessor had known only by the voice for many years, would kneel a few moments beside his waiting ear, in prayer for blessing and in review of those slips and errors which prove us all akin.
The day had been long and fatiguing.