The City and the World | Page 7

souls yet ere I am called."
He could utter no other prayer.
Morning found both master and servant, now servant and master,
before the altar where both were servants.
III.
It was fifteen years later when the brethren of the little Community of
San Ambrogio gathered in their chapel to sing the requiem over their
founder and first General, Father Denfili, who died, old and blind, after
twenty years of retirement into obscurity. But there were more than his
brethren there. For all those years he had occupied, day after day, the

solitude of a little confessional in the chapel. He had had his penitents
there, and, in a general way, the brethren of San Ambrogio knew that
there were among them many distinguished ones; but they were not
prepared for the revelation that his obsequies gave them. Cardinals,
Roman nobles, soldiers, prelates, priests and citizens crowded into the
little chapel. They were those who had knelt week after week at the feet
of the saint.
But there was one penitent, greater than them all in dignity and sanctity,
who could not come. The tears blinded him that morning when he said
Mass in his own chapel at the Vatican for the soul of Father Denfili. At
the hour of the requiem he looked longingly toward Via Paoli, where
his old spiritual father was lying dead before the altar of the cloister
chapel; and the tears came again into eyes that needed all their vision to
gaze far out, from his watch-tower, on the City and the World.

THE FLAMING CROSS
I.
It was already midnight when Orville, Thornton and Callovan arose
from a table of the club dining-room and came down in the elevator for
their hats and coats. They had spent an evening together, delightful to
all three. This dinner and chat had become an annual affair, to give the
old chums of St. Wilbur's a chance to live over college days, and keep a
fine friendship bright and lasting. Not one of them was old enough to
feel much change from the spirit of youth. St. Wilbur's was a fresh
memory and a pleasant one; and no friends of business or society had
grown half so precious for any one of these three men as were the other
two, whom the old college had introduced and had bound to him.
The difference in the appearance of the friends was very marked.
Thornton had kept his promise of growing up as he had started: short,
fat and jovial. Baldness was beginning to show at thirty-five. His
stubby mustache was as unmanageable as the masters of St. Wilbur's
had found its owner to be. He had never affected anything, for he had

always been openly whatever he allowed himself to drift into. Neither
of his friends liked many of his actions, nor the stories told of him; but
they liked him personally and were inclined to be silently sorry for him,
but not to sit in judgment upon him. Both Orville and Callovan waited
and hoped for "old Thornton"; but the wait had been long and the hope
very much deferred.
Callovan was frankly Irish. The curly black hair of the Milesian spoke
for him as clearly as the blue-gray eye. He shaved clean and he looked
clean. An ancestry of hard workers left limbs that lifted him to almost
six feet of strong manhood. His skin was ruddy and fresh. Two years
younger than Thornton, he yet looked younger by five. And Callovan,
like Thornton, was inwardly what the outward signs promised.
Orville was tall and straight. The ghost of a black mustache was on his
lip. His hair was scanty, and was parted carefully. His dress showed
taste, but not fastidiousness. He was handsome, well groomed and
particular, without obtrusiveness in any one of the points. He was just a
little taller than Callovan; but he was grayer and a great deal more
thoughtful. He was a hard book to read, even for an intimate; but the
print was large, if the text was puzzling. He looked to be "in" the world,
but who could say if he were "of" it?
All three of these friends were very rich. Thornton had made his money
within five years--a lucky mining strike, a quick sale, a move to the city,
speculation, politics were mixed up in a sort of rapid-fire story that the
other friends never cared to hear the details of. Callovan inherited his
wealth from his hard-fisted old father, who had died but a year before.
Orville was the richest of the three. He had always been rich. His father
had died a month before he was born. His mother paid for her only
child with her life. Orville's guardian had, as soon as possible, placed
him in