"Isn't it mysterious?" she asked, in a half-whisper, for loud tones would
make jarring notes in this haunt of silence. "Can anything have happened
to the Padre?"

"Things don't happen these days," Nick reassured her.

But he was not quite easy in his mind. "It's too dark for you to see the
vestments well. Shall I carry them downstairs?"

"No," said Angela. "I'd rather look at them here. It's like staring at
flowers in the night. The colours come up to your eyes in the most
wonderful way."

Seeing that she meant to kneel by the open chest Nick whipped off his coat
to lay under her knees, and she laughed as she named him Sir Walter
Raleigh. Hilliard and Billy stood behind her, Nick stooping sometimes to
examine a stole or altar-cloth she wished to show him, Billy frankly
bored, until a faint sound somewhere made him prick up his ears.

"Maybe that's the Padre now," said he. "Shall I go and look?" Then he
pattered down the steep stairway without waiting to be answered.

Angela and Nick forgot him for a moment, until his nasal young voice
called excitedly from below the gallery:

"Say, Mr. Hilliard, we're locked in!"

"What!" exclaimed Nick, straightening himself up and dropping the end of
an embroidered stole.