The service began.  Since the days when the primitive Christians worshiped amid the caverns of the earth, can any service be imagined nobler in itself, or sublimer in the circumstances surrounding it, than that which was now offered up?  Here was no artificial pomp, no gaudy profusion of ornament, no attendant grandeur of man’s creation.  All around this church spread the hushed and awful majesty of the tranquil sea.  The roof of this cathedral was the immeasurable heaven, the pure moon its one great light, the countless glories of the stars its only adornment.  Here were no hired singers or rich priest-princes; no curious sight-seers, or careless lovers of sweet sounds.  This congregation and they who had gathered it together, were all poor alike, all persecuted alike, all worshiping alike, to the overthrow of their worldly interests, and at the imminent peril of their lives.  How brightly and tenderly the moonlight shone upon the altar and the people before it! how solemnly and divinely the deep harmonies, as they chanted the penitential Psalms, mingled with the hoarse singing of the freshening night breeze in the rigging of the ship! how sweetly the still rushing murmur of many voices, as they uttered the responses together, now died away, and now rose again softly into the mysterious night!

Of all the members of the congregation—­young or old—­there was but one over whom that impressive service exercised no influence of consolation or of peace; that one was Gabriel.  Often, throughout the day, his reproaching conscience had spoken within him again and again.  Often when he joined the little assembly on the beach, he turned away his face in secret shame and apprehension from Perrine and her father.  Vainly, after gaining the deck of the ship, did he try to meet the eye of Father Paul as frankly, as readily, and as affectionately as others met it.  The burden of concealment seemed too heavy to be borne in the presence of the priest—­and yet, torment as it was, he still bore it!  But when he knelt with the rest of the congregation and saw Perrine kneeling by his side—­when he felt the calmness of the solemn night and the still sea filling his heart—­when the sounds of the first prayers spoke with a dread spiritual language of their own to his soul—­then the remembrance of the confession which he had neglected, and the terror of receiving unprepared the sacrament which he knew would be offered to him—­grew too vivid to be endured; the sense that he merited no longer, though once worthy of it, the confidence in his perfect truth and candor placed in him by the woman with whom he was soon to stand before the altar, overwhelmed him with shame:  the mere act of kneeling among that congregation, the passive accomplice by his silence and secrecy, for aught he knew to the contrary, of a crime which it was his bounden duty to denounce, appalled him as if he had already committed sacrilege that could never be forgiven.  Tears flowed down his cheeks, though he strove to repress them:  sobs burst from him, though he tried to stifle them.  He knew that others besides Perrine were looking at him in astonishment and alarm; but he could neither control himself, nor move to leave his place, nor raise his eyes even—­until suddenly he felt a hand laid on his shoulder.  That touch, slight as it was, ran through him instantly He looked up, and saw Father Paul standing by his side.