morning, this rising flood of sunlight, greenery and birds, which
overflowed even to the foot of the Calvary where doomed nature was
wrestling in the death-throes.

'_Per omnia soecula soeculorum_,' he said.

'Amen,' answered Vincent.

The _Pater_ ended, the priest, holding the host over the chalice, broke
it in the centre. Detaching a particle from one of the halves, he
dropped it into the precious blood, to symbolise the intimate union into
which he was about to enter with God. He said the _Agnus Dei_ aloud,
softly recited the three prescribed prayers, and made his act of
unworthiness, and then with his elbows resting on the altar, and with
the paten beneath his chin, he partook of both portions of the host at
once. After a fervent meditation, with his hands clasped before his
face, he took the paten and gathered from the corporal the sacred
particles of the host that had fallen, and dropped them into the
chalice. One particle which had adhered to his thumb he removed with his
forefinger. And, crossing himself, chalice in hand, with the paten once
again below his chin, he drank all the precious blood in three draughts,
never taking his lips from the cup's rim, but imbibing the divine
Sacrifice to the last drop.

Vincent had risen to fetch the cruets from the credence table. But
suddenly the door of the passage leading to the parsonage flew open and
swung back against the wall, to admit a handsome child-like girl of
twenty-two, who carried something hidden in her apron.

'Thirteen of them,' she called out. 'All the eggs were good.' And she