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Scotch. "There may be something in your theory," he admitted. "I'm not especially strong on doctrine, but I can't believe the fathers of the early church were the crude nincompoops some of our modern theologians call them. They preached posthumous absolution, and there are instances recorded where excommunicated persons who had hovered round the scenes they'd known in life were given rest and peace when absolution was pronounced above their graves. Tell me, is this Balderson sincerely sorry for his misdeeds?"
    "I could swear it, mon pere," "Then bring him to the chapel in the morning. If he will make confession and declare sincere repentance, then submit himself to holy baptism, 1*11 do what you request. It's rather mediaeval, but— I'd hate to think that I'm so modern that I would not take a chance to save two souls."
    The penitential service in the Chapel of the Intercession was a brief but most impressive one. Only Balderson, I and de Grandin occupied the pews, with Doctor Bentley in his stole and cassock, but without his surplice, at the little altar:
    ". . . we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against Thy holy laws . . . remember not, Lord, our offenses nor the offenses of our forefathers, neither take Thou vengeance of our sins ... we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickednesses; the memory of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable . . ."
    After absolution followed the short service ordered for the baptism of adults; then we set out for Shadow Lawns.
    Now Doctor Bentley wore his full canonicals, and his surplice glinted almost whiter than the snow that wrapped the mounded graves as he paused beside an unmarked hillock in the Nurmi family plot.
    Slowly he began in that low, full voice with which he fills a great church to its farthest corner: "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. . . ."
    It was one of those still winter days, quieter than an afternoon in August, for no chirp of bird or whir of insect sounded. no breath of breeze disturbed the evergreens; yet as he read the opening sentence of the office for the burial of the dead a low wail sounded in the copse of yew and hemlock on the hill, as though a sudden wind moaned in the branches, and I stiffened as a scent was borne across the snow-capped grave mounds. Incense! Yet not exactly incense, either. There was an undertone of fetor in it, a faint, distinctly charnel smell. Balderson was trembling, and despite myself I flinched,
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    but Doctor Bentley and de Grandin gave no sign of recognition.
    "Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts, shut not Thy merciful ears to our prayer, but spare us, Lord most holy . . ." intoned the clergyman, and,
    "Amen," said Jules de Grandin firmly as the prayer concluded.
    The JEolian wailing in the evergreens died to a sobbing, low damation as Doctor Bentley traced in sand a cross upon the snow-capped grave, declaring: "Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our departed sister, and we commit her body to the ground: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life "
    And now there was no odor of corruption in the ghostly perfume, but the clean, inspiring scent of frankincense, redolent of worship at a thousand consecrated altars.
    As the last amen was said and Doctor Bentley turned away I could have sworn I heard a gentle slapping sound and saw the blond hairs of de Grandin's small mustache bend inward, as though a pair of lips invisible to me had kissed him on the mouth.
    Doctor Bentley dined with us that night, and over coffee and liqueurs we discussed the case.
    "It was a fine thing you did," the cleric told de Grandin, "Six men in seven
    would have sent him packing and bid him work out his salvation— ot damnation—for himself. There's an essential nastiness in Devil-worship which is