"I left it a month after you did." "But your vows,—were they not for life?" Paul asked. Father Adrian smiled scornfully. "I was not bound to Cruta," he answered. "There had been complaints, and I was there to investigate them. The monastery was poverty and disease-stricken. It is closed now forever." "Then you are no monk?" Father Adrian shook his head. "I am, and I am not. In my youth I served my novitiate, but I never [pg 76] took the oaths. The cloisters are for holier men than I." [pg 76] "Then who are you?" "I am—Father Adrian, priest of the Roman Catholic Church, I can tell you no more." The moonlight was falling full upon his dark, striking face. Paul, with bent brows, scanned every feature of it intently. Father Adrian bore the scrutiny without flinching and without discomposure. Only once the colour mounted a little into his cheeks as the eyes of the two men met. "What brings you to Vaux Abbey, Father Adrian?" Paul asked at length. "To see your home," was the quiet reply. "What do you want with me? It must be something more than curiosity which has brought you all this way. What is it?" Father Adrian was silent. Yet his silence was not one of confusion. He was looking down through the gaps in the ruined chapel walls at the dark Gothic front of the old Abbey. Paul waited for an answer, and it came at last. "I wished to see the home of Martin de Vaux, the Englishman who died in my arms at the monastery of Cruta. For six nights I have prayed for his soul in Purgatory, amongst the ruins here. He died in grievous sin!" [pg 77] [pg 77] "Have you come to remind me of it?" Paul asked bitterly. "Perhaps you have repented of your silence, and have come to break the widow's heart by telling her the story of his last moments. Perhaps—perhaps in those dark hours he told you his secret—told you why he had come to Cruta!" "He did," said the priest gravely.
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