Helbeck looked uncomfortable, but was not ready enough to stave off the
impending confidence. Williams fixed him with eyes now fully lifted, and
piercingly bright.

"You said little--that is quite true. But it was what you did, what I saw
as I worked here beside you week after week that conquered me. Do you
remember once rebuking me in anger because I had made some mistake in the
chapel work? You were very angry--and I was cut to the heart. That very
night you came to me, as I was still working, and asked my pardon--you!
Mr. Helbeck of Bannisdale, and I, a boy of sixteen, the son of the
wheelwright who mended your farm carts. You made me kneel down beside you
on the steps of the sanctuary--and we said the Confiteor together. Don't
say you forget it!"

Helbeck hesitated, then spoke with evident unwillingness.

"You make a great deal of nothing, my dear Edward. I had treated you to
one of the Helbeck rages, I suppose--and had the grace to be ashamed of
myself."

"It made me a Catholic," said the other emphatically, "so I naturally
dwell upon it. Next day I stole a 'Garden of the Soul' and a book of
meditations from your study. Then, on the pretext of the work, I used to
make you tell me or read me the stories of the saints--later, I often
used to follow you in the morning when you went to Mass. I watched you
day by day, till the sense of something supernatural possessed me. Then
you noticed my coming to Mass--you asked Father Bowles to speak to
me--you seemed to shrink--or I thought so--from speaking yourself. But it
was not Father Bowles--it was not my first teachers at St. Aloysius it