prelate, a Domestic Prelate to His Holiness. I am afraid it is the
domesticity of the title that sticks here in Sihasset, rather than the
prelacy. My people are poor--mostly mill workers. I have never shown
them the purple. It might frighten them out of saying 'Father.'"

"But surely--" Mark hesitated.

"Oh, yes, I know what you are thinking. I did like it at first, but I
was younger then, and more ambitious. You know, Mr. Griffin, I find
that the priesthood is something like a river. The farther you go from
the source the deeper and wider it gets; and it's at its best as it
nears the ocean. Even when it empties into the wider waters, it isn't
quite lost. It's in the beginning that you notice the flowers on the
bank. Coming toward the end, it's--well, different."

"You are not beginning to think you are old?"

"No." Father Murray was very positive. "I am not old yet; but I'm
getting there, for I'm forty-five. Only five years until I strike the
half-century mark. But why talk about priests and the priesthood? You
are not a Catholic?"

"I don't know," said Mark. "The difference between us religiously,
Monsignore, is that I was and am not; you were not and behold you are."

Father Murray looked interested.

"Yes, yes," he said; "I am a convert. It was long ago, though. I was
a young Presbyterian minister, and it's odd how it came about. Newman
didn't get me, though he shook his own tree into the Pope's lap; I