ing questions. Had he made his peace with God at least? Had he been shriven? Would he go to his doom as a good Christian? Christ have pity on him: it was hard to die! Our Lady succor him at the last. Don't be playing here, boys, this is no place for sport! But the group of youths, slim in tight-fitting doublets and long hose, with laughing faces, hanging hair, and jaunty, long-quilled caps, were rehearsing the act of the falling, triangular knife, the “scure," and striking one another's neck with mimic sounds.

In the midst of it all, motionless beside the scaffold, stood a nun's figure in white and black. The group of her companions sought to screen her, but her eyes were shut, and her mind so rapt and uplifted in God, she knew not anything that passed around her. Motionless, even as her body, was her spirit; her whole soul one intense, wordless prayer. Her, too, the curious quickly detected and marveled seeing her. That was Catherine, Benincasa's daughter, did you know her? a strange person. Some, easily credulous, held her to be a saint. She neither ate nor slept-heaven deliver us! But 'twas said she had blessed a vat and the wine never ceased flowing-which was an excellent great miracle, if true; and sick persons were found to profess that she had cured them by the mere touch of her hand.

In a lull of silence the wind brought a few faint strokes of the Martorana tolling, slowly, far away. The sad procession had set forth.

One there beheld it in the streets of Siena. It was at the market, at the Croce, between the tall, gray Gothic palaces with people pressed up close against the walls, or gaping outward from the windows. She saw the quiet face, with its eyes that had no fear, and the bound arms that struck her with such intolerable pity for the likeness they made in him to One more loved. Yet the young man walked full peacefully. He was not conscious of humiliation let the town folk gaze if they would, what did it matter? He was treading the flints of an earthly city for the last time. They had not let him wear his shoulder-cape, with the hood attached, so he walked bareheaded, his countenance unsheltered; but it put him in mind of something Catherine had said: "So would I also," he mused, "if I walked before the Host." Then, clear to his recollection, came his last injunction: "Pray to Our Lady-pray as thou goest-her tears have saved thee," and with the memory of his mother's room, vaguely, her voice singing came to him in snatches of a cantiléna (a very simple melody, slow-measured, and

rather monotonous) which she used to croon over her wool-carding and spinning, pausing between the suspended rhythms of the lines, as the peasants do a-mowing, when the long swaths of green fall beneath the scythe and the slow-voice hovers over them, the broad last note prolonged indefinitely in the sun.

Stabat Mater dolorosa

He could remember the very vowels upon which the long beat and the ensuing short note and silence fell. There was too much of the song for any lad to recollect. But scraps of it he knew well.

Juxta crucem tecum stare,

Et me tibi sociare,

In planctu desidero.

How sweetly sorrowful and how full of meaning the Latin was! That other Mother, who had wept so much, was waiting for him— where Catherine waited. This was Siena, her city, which he had hated, unspeakably, and now could not find it in his heart to hate any more. And the sunshine, so warm and welcome-God's-up above, the fair blue with a few white clouds sailing in it. In one hour-less-if it pleased God, he, he who this moment could feel the paving-stones of Siena beneath his long, soft, pointed shoes, would be in Paradise. It seemed as though he could not possibly be worthy; but Catherine had said so-"like the good thief."

Once again the sound of a Woman weeping welled up within his soul, moving him to such sore pity his own tears threatened to overflood and break the dams; but it were idle to weep now, his sins forgiven, her mercy waiting to help him at the scaffold, her Son's dead face unveiled for him and her.

They were at the towered gate with its fresco of the Crucifixion, and the procession halted that the sentence might be proclaimed anew. Then slowly, narrowed by the affluence of people at that spot, it moved out beyond the city walls. It was in the open now, whence glimpses of the lovely outlying country could be caught. The sun grew hotter: here, about the clearing on the hill, all Siena seemed to have gathered.

The companions standing around Catherine drew closer.
"Mother, he is coming!"

She opened her eyes-which had just seen him raise up his

to the block, and his soul higher, even as he prayed: "Thy will be done."

The grotesque and terrible forms which had surrounded and conveyed him, officers of justice, guards, soldiers, the "birri" (most detested of all men save the abhorred and, in the eyes of the populace, vile executioner and his assistants), a trumpeter of the Republic, the crier in his tabard, all drew aside and, for one moment, those two figures, the humblest and most significant of the whole assemblage, were face to face.

Meekly the young knight smiled his gladness, and knelt before her asking for a last blessing. The stalwart strength of yore seemed to have returned to the vigorous body: his eyes, full of love and reverence, dwelt manfully and yet most tenderly upon the holy face. Pale and worn it was, with eyes the color of the olive tree in the wind. She was awed almost at his fortitude; for there was little more of the earth than the strong frame and swarthy features left about him, and it might have been his knightly patron, St. Michael, kneeling there before her. She made the Sign of the Cross upon his forehead, touching him lightly. No more need to exhort, no more need to encourage. The calmness of each was a pillar to the other.

"Depart," she said, quite peacefully, yet somewhat longingly, to the everlasting nuptials." And then, as he still waited: "Soon, very soon, you will be in the life that never ends."

He bent his head to kiss her hand-the hand that had just blessed him-and arose. His eyes still thanked her, but a great silence, in which God was, enveloped him and he had no more words.

Unassisted, he ascended the scaffold steps. There was a surge in the crowd as though it moved to him, a sea of dead-white faces wavering. Then complete stillness. One moment he stood-alone -detached from all, his eyes traveling over them, seeing them, indeed, yet his mind, in some way, absent. A gray-haired woman of the lowest class, bareheaded and in tatters, raised herself up to cry aloud to him: "God pity thee, poor son! God speed thy soul!"

"Amen," he answered softly, and turned his countenance to the executioner as though to give him leave. The man advanced. At the same moment Catherine's hands touched the big, open, oversleeve depending from the shoulder. Here his last glance of recognition. Then calmly, silent still, she knelt. With her fingers that trembled a little, yet were firm, she placed his head as it should be: he suffered it, never stirring. His hair fell over her hands

and she knelt beside him, leaning, to speak the last words he would ever hear: "Remember, now, dear brother, the Blood of the Spotless Lamb, shed for thee. His Name be thy last word."

The murmured answer reached her ears alone: "JesusCatherine."

In the same instant the blade gleamed on high; there was in the crowd a quick movement of recoil, of horror, a gasp; a great spurt of blood over the scaffold; then sobs broke forth, and the pent ranks broke up. Catherine had the head in her hands, dim irises that seemed to look out still from under the fallen lids, lips livingly parted. Inwardly, she lifted up her gaze to adore the divine goodness.

And even as she did, the earth vanished and sank away from her, and lo! before her, radiant in splendor, she beheld "Him Who is God and Man." She saw Him gathering that out-poured blood and placing it, with unspeakable love, in "the open Wound of His side, the treasury of His mercy," and the humble knight she saw received "by the august Trinity, his soul flooded with a joy that would have ravished a thousand hearts."

Hands pulling at her mantle forced her return to conscious being. She gazed around upon them, her children and companions, her eyes steeped in the bliss of celestial mysteries: "Why did you call me back?" she gently chided them. "I was seeing Christ Jesus, and the blessed spirit of our brother enter eternal life."

"What, Mother, is he in heaven already?"

"He paused but at the threshold: as the bride, who turns to thank with gracious-bending head, those who have brought her to the bridegroom's door. Nay, do not wipe the blood from off my garments. Nay, leave it to me, daughter! It has the sweetness of frankincense, balsam-the perfume of the white-starred orange groves in May."

THE ORIGINALITY OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF

LIFE.

BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.

N idea of exceptional character and consequence marks off the Christian doctrine of life from all others before or since. It is the idea of personal union and communion with God in the world to come. Note the words well. They express an historical fact, a transcendent conception, a sublime idea, in the presence of which the resemblances to Christianity found in other religions all pale into insignificance.

Thumb the dog-eared pages of antiquity over and over again, no analogue of this conception will reward your search. The idea of sharing the divine life and retaining one's own personality the while, the idea that the relation of union is to be that of person to person, without identity, transformation, or absorption, and on the noble plane of intimate friendship, occurred to no ancient philosophical or religious thinker. It had no heralds to trumpet forth its coming, but came at once and unannounced. If you can resist the impression that it is a revealed concept, arising from no human source, but heaven-blown suddenly into the minds of men, your powers of resistance must be other than intellectual-part of that will to disbelieve, which still awaits its James in psychology and its Harnack in history. And should you insist that it must have had its foregleams, like all notions other, you will be unable to point them out.

The most that Plato dared hope was to contemplate the World of Ideas, and this meant in his philosophy not a personal, but a personified, world of good. Aristotle declared friendship between man and God impossible. The pagan Elysium, where "life is easiest to man, and no snow is nor storm nor any rain," presents a picture of temporal conditions made better-it contains not the least suggestion that the Divine and the human are there intimately to meet. The paradise of Mahomet is a mere prolongation of earthly joys intensified-it promises no intimacy of relationship with the one and only God, of whom Allah is the prophet. The Jew hoped to revive in the bosom of Abraham-the abode of the blessed; he knew the slavery of the old law, he did not know the