"He is gone to the things that he loved," thought Patrasche; he could
not understand, but he was full of sorrow and of pity for the art
passion that to him was so incomprehensible and yet so sacred.

The portals of the cathedral were unclosed after the midnight mass. Some
heedlessness in the custodians, too eager to go home and feast or sleep,
or too drowsy to know whether they turned the keys aright, had left one
of the doors unlocked. By that accident the footfalls Patrasche sought
had passed through into the building, leaving the white marks of snow
upon the dark stone floor. By that slender white thread, frozen as it
fell, he was guided through the intense silence, through the immensity
of the vaulted space--guided straight to the gates of the chancel,
and, stretched there upon the stones, he found Nello. He crept up,
and touched the face of the boy. "Didst thou dream that I should be
faithless and forsake thee? I--a dog?" said that mute caress.

The lad raised himself with a low cry and clasped him close. "Let us lie
down and die together," he murmured. "Men have no need of us, and we are
all alone."

In answer, Patrasche crept closer yet, and laid his head upon the young
boy's breast. The great tears stood in his brown, sad eyes; not for
himself--for himself he was happy.

They lay close together in the piercing cold. The blasts that blew over
the Flemish dikes from the northern seas were like waves of ice, which
froze every living thing they touched. The interior of the immense
vault of stone in which they were was even more bitterly chill than the
snow-covered plains without. Now and then a bat moved in the shadows;
now and then a gleam of light came on the ranks of carven figures. Under