justified by reason of the severity necessary to his office, or as
wiped out by his virtues--and he had many virtues.

The Vicar-General's eyes sought those of the Silent Angel, and he lost
some of his fear, while the weight of his vestments became a little
lighter. But the Silent Angel's gaze caused the Vicar-General again to
look at the witnesses. Those against him were increasing. The faces of
the new-comers he did not know. The Vicar-General felt like protesting
that there must be some mistake, for the new-comers were red men,
brown men, yellow men and black men, besides white men whose faces
were altogether strange. He was sure none of these had ever been in
his parish. The new-comers were dressed in the garbs of every nation
under the sun. They all alike looked very sternly at the
Vicar-General, so that he could not bear their glances. Still he could
not understand how he had ever offended against them, nor could he
surmise why they should be witnesses to his hurt.

The Silent Angel still stood beside the Vicar-General; but the
troubled soul of the priest could find no enlightenment in his eyes.
All the while witnesses kept arriving and the multitude of them filled
him with a great terror.

At last he saw a face amongst the strangers which he thought familiar,
and he began to understand. It was the face of a priest he had known,
who had been in the same diocese, somewhat under the Vicar-General's
authority. On earth this priest had been one of the quiet kind,
without ambition except to serve in a very humble way. He had always
been in a parish so poor and small, that the priest himself had in his
manner, his bearing, even his clothes, reflected its humility and its
poverty. The Vicar-General remembered that the priest had once come to