leap-year. Tell me where the pantry is and I will set the table. I begin to believe I have not left the Jüdenstrasse after all. The dogwood in that old blue jar looks familiar, and those water-colors, though local in subject, are distinctly after the early manner of Von Vollmar."

"I studied with him for a while," said the priest. "You will find some odds and ends of crockery in the cupboard yonder." Dace proceeded to set the table, juggling cleverly with the plates and saucers knives and forks.

"Be careful, please," said the priest, peering up through the steam of the pot he was stirring. "I distrust all magicians. You will never be able to replace anything you may break in that unique collection."

They sat down to supper and Father Honoré glanced at the table with its centrepiece of wild-grapes in a flat garland of purple clematis.

"If you were not a religious I should suspect you of being an æs thete and an epicure," said Dace slyly.

"Thanks for the garland," was the reply after the benediction, "plain food properly cooked and decently served is part of a man's religion. When these country demoiselles show a flagging interest in spelling I put them to peeling potatoes, à la Squeers. You recall the story of Saint Norah?”

After supper, of which Dace ate but little notwithstanding his praise, they sat again on the cabin steps to watch the moon rise.

"I did not see mamma before I came here," said Dace abruptly. "Well?"

"I will be frank with you, Father. I intended to live like a hermit here, in this Cove, without anyone's knowledge, and die just as my father and aunt did before me. Also just as soon as I could, short of doing positive violence to myself. The best physicians in Germany told me I had but a short while to live, and that I must give up my music if I wanted that brief lease of life. To give up my music is, however, an impossibility, and so. . . .

"And so ?"

"I came, bringing my violin with me, and my zither and my guitar!"

"And found your hermitage preempted? I will relinquish it immediately, if you wish." In reply the young man burst out in the mountain dialect :

"Pears like thur haint nare a place fur me nowhur!" got up impetuously, ran across the yard and clambered upon the ledge; flung

himself down upon the cold stone and relieved his burning heart with bitter tears.

The priest went into the cabin and there remained for some time; then came out and approached the ledge, sat upon its selvage and began to speak into the ear of the prostrate figure. Presently the young man raised himself up, listened, and returned to the cabin, leaning upon the arm of his companion. The door between the two

rooms was open, and through it he caught sight of an altar, a rude block of the beautiful native marble, covered with a strip of coarse linen, surmounted by a stone crucifix whose piercing realism was intensified by the artistic perfection of its rough modelling.

There was nothing else in the oratory to distract attention, the altar screening the fireplace whose cavernous opening was filled with fresh pine-boughs that diffused an agreeable, aromatic odor of balsam throughout the cabin.

A shed-room in the rear supplied a sleeping-place. In the dead of night, Dace, unable to close his eyes, rose softly from his palette of pine-straw and stole into the oratory.

The waning moon hung in the shutterless casement, and through the small panes of greenish glass cast a pale light upon altar-stone and crucifix.

Dace fell upon his knees, pressed his palms together ; ejaculations, petitions, self-accusation in dear familiar phrase long neglected, rose to his heart and trembled on his lips.

He prayed.

CHAPTER VI.

Mrs. Weldon replied to the letter Dace wrote her from the Cove by going at once to Sapona. She was much shocked by the young fellow's appearance, though she hid her sorrow and dismay under a composure long since learned of grief and resignation.

Her hope for him chimed with Father Honoré's prophecy, and her apprehension was lessened by her visit to the Cove, where she became intensely interested in the mountain mission.

"Can I not come also?" she asked eagerly of the priest. "Do let me. I am alone in Charleston; Doris is married, and Faun is in Kentucky at school. I will have another cabin and schoolhouse built and will keep house for you and Dace. And I can teach the girls sewing, cooking-anything you wish."

"You will spoil us dreadfully, I foresee," replied Father Honoré,

but I haven't strength of mind enough to say no. Au contraire, I shall be only too happy to have your aid."

Assisted by his cousins, Friday and Saturday Week, Dace set to work, and the second cabin was quickly and not unartistically built of rough-hewn timbers on a base of rock. A large room was added for school purposes, and the whole fitted up to every one's satisfaction, with furniture from the Charleston house, including a grand piano.

Mrs. Weldon was an excellent musician, and when this last elephant was coaxed into place Father Honoré exhibited a child-like delight. "Bien, très bien !" he exclaimed, "we will begin by giving a concert. Sonatas, concertos, symphonies. . . I hear them already." He played two or three keys with a stiff forefinger, so that the others laughed at him.

..

"You have a vivid imagination, dear Father," said Mrs. Weldon. Then to Dace, a little wistfully:

"You know we have never heard you play?"

"So you have not," he replied, and ran out to get his violin. Several of the Days of the Week, who had taken advantage of their cousinship and carpentering to be in at the housewarming, settled themselves on the porch. Mrs. Weldon sank upon a lounge, for she was tired from much picture and curtain hanging. Father Honoré leaned back in an arm-chair, for once not despising comfort.

In the doorway Dace tucked the shining Amati under his chin, looked over the enchanting panorama of nature before him, drew the supple bow across the responsive strings, and the first whispering note quivered like a long-drawn sigh upon the listening air of evening.

When he ceased playing-and how long he played neither he nor the others could have told-a heart-breaking sob from the lounge echoed the last lingering chord. The Days of the Week sat in the twilight, chin upon hand, tears running down their stolid faces. The priest bent his head, letting the thin, gray locks fall over his forehead, clasped his crucifix upon his breast and pressed it to his heart.

Dilsey, the black, the aged, the imperturbable, came in, ponderously bearing a lighted lamp.

Again the violinist lifted his bow; it descended upon the strings in a scintillation of aspeggi, like rainbow bubbles or sparks of electric fire. Swiftly the silver mountain torrent rushed from rock to rock; birds gossipped, twittered, quarrelled in its dancing shower: trees rustled, spring warbled gayly in the sunny air; winged creatures called one to another as they flew from bough to bough, a rare cadence

sounding through sharp call and flute-like whistle; squirrels chattered; the nuts fell in the joyous woods.

Tears were dried as by magic.

Mrs. Weldon sat up with beaming eyes of youth, the Weeks got upon their clumsy feet and stood agape. Dilsey paused, her fat, black hand embracing the globe of the lamp, mouth open, eyes stretched to utmost. Then she laughed aloud-a laugh echoed boisterously from the porch, where the grinning faces peered in at the windows.

Father Honoré rose from his chair and walked about smiling. Mrs. Weldon also sprang up, crying:

"Dace,

of the woods.

Dace, it is witchcraft! Magic! It is the song
It is your own !”

Dace, too, laughed aloud, leaped down the steps, and the wizard viol sounded far out upon the moon-struck ledge, laughing also in the merry night.

One evening after school Mrs. Week came to call on Mrs. Weldon. The children were romping homeward through the forest, some of the boys fluting on home-made reeds, the girls led by a nymph, Ginevra Vye in homespun blue, her stormy black hair bound fillet-wise with a spray of starry clematis. She waved a wand of purple iris, and marked the time as she chanted the last exercise in solfège; voices shouting through the woods in answering do, re, mi.

"They-uns 'pear tew enj'y theyselves acomin' tew skule," remarked the visitor, as she sat and chewed her snuffstick. "Thet Jinny Vye air ez plum full o' music ez her cousin."

"Her cousin?" asked Mrs. Weldon.

"Bud's her cousin. Her mother was a Green. Them two oughter make a match uv hit.”

Mrs. Weldon opened her lips to reply, then closed them with a smile.

CLAUDE M. GIRARDEAU.

TO THE CATHOLIC PRESS

AND ALL THe Catholic FAITHFUL of the UniTED STATES OF AMERICA, GREETING. (1)

THE Centro Católico de Filipinas, in the name and in representation of the Catholic peoples of the Philippines who body and soul associate therewith, has recently dispatched to their lordships, the Bishops of Pittsburg and Grand Rapids, a telegram of thanks, as a demonstration of heartfelt gratitude for the enthusiasm and valor with which their lordships protested against the expulsion of the Religious Orders from the Philippines.

Right well do we know that His Holiness Leo XIII, by the grace of God, supreme Pontiff of the Church Militant; Mgr. Chapelle, the late Delegate Apostolic of the Holy See; the Philippine Episcopate, and by far the greater and better part of our clergy and all the true Catholic people of the Philippines, are opposed to the proposed expulsion of the religious corporations from Philippine soil; but to us it was most grateful to know, by telegram of the 14th of last month, that the Catholic clergy and people of Pennsylvania and Michigan had publicly demonstrated the self-same sentiments.

We therefore consider it our duty to give to our Catholic Fathers and brethren of the United States our most sincere thanks and a lively congratulation for their noble and just attitude in this question, which is one of vital importance for the people of the Philippines, and we earnestly appeal to all the prelates and faithful of America for their aid and assistance against the taking of a step so transcendental for our religious and social future.

The Spanish Religious, who have been the objects of so much persecution, evangelized our country, taught us the arts of agriculture, industry and commerce; they inspired in us the love of the liberal arts; they gave us an exquisite social and moral education, and sent us forward in the path of true progress and civilization in a quiet and gentle manner. The whole world is witness to the fact that in three centuries we have passed from a state of savagery to

(1) We publish this important document exactly as we have received it, without alteration or correction. The reader will find in its errors a proof of the sincerity of the man who framed it.-EDITOR.