“I commend thee to Almighty God, dearest brother, and commend thee to Him whose creature thou art; that, when thou shalt have paid the debt of humanity by death, thou mayest return to the Maker, Who formed thee of the dust of the earth.  As thy soul goeth forth from the body, may the bright company of angels meet thee; may the judicial senate of Apostles greet thee; may the triumphant army of white-robed Martyrs come out to welcome thee; may the band of glowing Confessors, crowned with lilies, encircle thee; may the choir of Virgins, singing jubilees, receive thee; and the embrace of a blessed repose fold thee in the bosom of the Patriarchs; mild and festive may the aspect of Jesus Christ appear to thee, and may He award thee a place among them that stand before Him for ever.”

And so it went on; some of it appealing to her more, some less; some passages almost repulsive.  But her imagination had caught on to the vast outlines of the prayer—­the enormous nature of the claims made on behalf of the dying labourer.

Was it Pat Moloney who was to pass out of this darkness to “gaze with blessed eyes on the vision of Truth”?  What a tremendous assertion made with such intensity of confidence!  What a curious pageantry, too, so magnificent in its simplicity, was ordered, almost in tones of command, by the Church Militant for the reception of the charge she was giving up.  The triumphant army of Martyrs was to come out to meet him; the Confessors were to “encircle him”; Michael was “to receive him as Prince of the armies of Heaven.”  Peter, Paul, John were to be in attendance.  Nor in the rich strain was there any false ring of praise, or any attempt to veil the weakness of humanity.  “Rejoice his soul, O Lord, with Thy Presence, and remember not the iniquities and excesses which, through the violence of anger or the heat of evil passion, he hath at any time committed.  For, although he hath sinned, he hath not denied the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, but hath believed and hath had a zeal for God, and hath faithfully adored the Creator of all things.”

Was it an immense, an appalling impertinence—­this great drama?  Was it a mere mockery of the impotence and darkness of man’s life?  Would the priest say all this at the death-bed of the drunken beggar, of the voluptuous tyrant, of the woman who had been too hard or too weak in the bonds of the flesh?  Was it a last great delusion, a last panacea given by the Church to those who had consented to bandage their eyes and crook their knees in childish obedience?  Vaguely in her mind there flitted half phrases of the humanitarian, the materialist, the agnostic.  It seemed as if their views of the wreck on the bed pressed upon all her consciousness.  But, just as they had never succeeded in silencing the voice of that great drama of faith and prayer through the ages, so she could not dull to her own consciousness the strange, spiritual vitality that poured out in this triumphant call to the powers on high to come forth in all their glory to receive the inestimable treasure of the redeemed soul of Pat Moloney.