“So ye got nought from the wreck but a skiff-full of drink and food?”

“I bain’t sayin’ that, father dear, though it were as peaceful an’ dacent a wrack as ever yer reverence heard tell of.  Maybe yer reverence bes buildin’ another church somewheres?—­or a mission-house?—­or sendin’ money up-along to the poor haythens?”

“Aye, Denny, I am doing all these things,” replied the priest.  “Since first I set foot on Newfoundland I have built nine little churches, twelve mission-houses and one hospital—­aye, and sent a mint of money to the poor folk of other lands.  My dear parents left me a fortune of three hundreds of English pounds a year, Denny; and every year I give two hundred and fifty pounds of that fortune to the work of the Holy Church and beg and take twice as much more from the rich to give the poor.”

The skipper nodded.  This information was not new to him.

“I was thinkin’, yer reverence, as how some day ye’d maybe be buildin’ us a little church here in Chance Along,” he said.

“It would take money, my son—­money and hard work,” returned the priest.

“Aye, father dear, ‘twould take money an’ work.  There bes fifty golden sovereigns I knows of for yer reverence.”

“Clean money?”

“Aye, yer reverence.”

“From the wreck, Denny?”

“Aye, father dear, from the last wrack.”

“Without blood on it, my son?”

“Widout so much as a drop o’ blood on it, so help me Saint Peter!”

“And the other lads, Denny?  Are ye the only one in the harbor able to pay me something for the building of a church?”

There was the one question on the good priest’s tongue and another in his clear eyes.

“I bes skipper, father dear, an’ takes skipper’s shares and pays skipper’s shares,” replied Nolan.  “But for me there’d not bin one bottle o’ wine come to us from the wrack an’ the poor folks aboard her would never have got ashore in their boats for want of a light on the land-wash.  As I kin spare ye fifty pounds for the holy work, yer reverence, there bes nineteen men o’ this harbor kin each be sparin’ ye ten.”

Father McQueen nodded his gray head.

“Then we’ll have the little church, Denny,” he said.  “Aye, lad, we’ll have the little church shining out to sea from the cliffs above Chance Along.”

Father McQueen was a good man and a good priest, and would as readily have given his last breath as his last crust of bread in the service of his Master; but for the past thirty years he had lived and worked in a land of rocks, fogs and want, among people who snatched a livelihood from the sea with benumbed fingers and wrists pitted deep with scars of salt-water boils.  He had seen them risk their lives for food on the black rocks, the grinding ice and the treacherous tide; and now his heart felt with their hearts, his eyes saw with their eyes.  Their bitter birthright was the harvest of the coastwise seas; and he now realized