Sitting drowsily by the stove Grandfather peopled the quiet night with figures. He saw Saron filled; he saw men going after prayer to work in the fields and women in white filing in solemn procession to worship at midnight. They went joyfully, as he and Amos went sometimes to pray in the Saal. He heard above his little cottage heavenly songs issuing from the high matin room of Saron.
But the figures in his dreams were not those of departed saints. The face of the speaker in the pulpit who held an audience enthralled, not alone by his eloquence, but by the power of truth, was not that of Father Friedsam, but of Amos; the cowled and robed figure which was followed by adoring converts was that of Amos; the religious who knelt alone in the Saal at midnight praying for his people was Amos. It was mediæval and strange, but it was real to the dreamer. It had all happened once, less than two hundred years ago--it might, if it pleased God, happen again.
But Amos, alas! had come to doubt his own strength, had come indeed to fear his own thoughts. As he bent over "The Mystic Dove" on this winter evening his face was drawn, the fingers with which he held his pen were icy. He was trying to translate a sentence which he believed praised the holy mystery of the sacraments, but his mind was not upon his work, and, spoken to suddenly, he started as guiltily as though Grandfather had looked into his heart and detected his disquiet.
"Our little girl is learning to submit herself," said Grandfather contentedly. "Matthew tells me so. That's the first lesson learned--quiet. She is like the noble Sister Anastasia whose pride was softened. Have you seen Ellen at any time?"
"Once," answered Amos without lifting his head. He spoke indifferently and bent more closely over his work, as though he had reached an important paragraph. It was the acting of a lie, for he thought of Ellen in school and at home and especially in the long evenings when it was supposed that his sacred task occupied his mind. He had been thinking of her when Grandfather spoke; for her benefit he was making a strange plan.
Last Sunday afternoon he had gone for a walk. Even then he had not been quite honest with himself, for he had pretended that his object was exercise, when deep in his heart he hugged a hope of seeing Ellen. An intense natural shyness and a consciousness of guilt forbade him Matthew's door. It was unthinkable that he should "go to see" Ellen!