therefore, be in a position to make good my promise to them.  I heard one say to the other, ‘Let us risk it’; and then they took me in their arms, carried me down to a boat on the beach, and rowed to a vessel in the offing.  The next day they disembarked me at Paimboeuf, where I got the assistance which I so much needed.  I learned, through the confidence they were obliged to place in me in order to give me the means of sending them their promised reward, that these men were smugglers, and that they were in the habit of using the cavity in which I had been laid as a place of concealment for goods, and for letters of advice to their accomplices.  This accounted for their finding me.  As to my wound, I was informed by the surgeon who attended me that it had missed being inflicted in a mortal part by less than a quarter of an inch, and that, as it was, nothing but the action of the night air in coagulating the blood over the place, had, in the first instance, saved my life.  To be brief, I recovered after a long illness, returned to Paris, and was called to the priesthood.  The will of my superiors obliged me to perform the first duties of my vocation in the great city; but my own wish was to be appointed to a cure of souls in your province, Gabriel.  Can you imagine why?”

The answer to this question was in Gabriel’s heart; but he was still too deeply awed and affected by what he had heard to give it utterance.

“I must tell you, then, what my motive was,” said Father Paul.  “You must know first that I uniformly abstained from disclosing to any one where and by whom my life had been attempted.  I kept this a secret from the men who rescued me—­from the surgeon—­from my own friends even.  My reason for such a proceeding was, I would fain believe, a Christian reason.  I hope I had always felt a sincere and humble desire to prove myself, by the help of God, worthy of the sacred vocation to which I was destined.  But my miraculous escape from death made an impression on my mind, which gave me another and an infinitely higher view of this vocation—­the view which I have since striven, and shall always strive for the future, to maintain.  As I lay, during the first days of my recovery, examining my own heart, and considering in what manner it would be my duty to act toward your father when I was restored to health, a thought came into my mind which calmed, comforted, and resolved all my doubts.  I said within myself, ’In a few months more I shall be called to be one of the chosen ministers of God.  If I am worthy of my vocation, my first desire toward this man who has attempted to take my life should be, not to know that human justice has overtaken him, but to know that he has truly and religiously repented and made atonement for his guilt.  To such repentance and atonement let it be my duty to call him; if he reject that appeal, and be hardened only the more against me because I have forgiven him my injuries, then it will be time enough to denounce him for his