"But," said the Cardinal half aloud, with the gentle dawning of a tender smile brightening the fine firm curve of his lips, — "it is not the end! The end here, no doubt; — but the beginning — there!" He raised his eyes devoutly, and instinctively touched the silver crucifix hanging by its purple ribbon at his breast. The orange-red glow of the sun encompassed him with fiery rings, as though it would fain consume his thin, black-garmented form after the fashion in which flames consumed the martyrs of old, — the worn figures of mediaeval saints in their half-broken niches stared down upon him stonily, as though they would have said, — "So we thought, — even we! — and for our thoughts and for our creed we suffered willingly, — yet lo, we have come upon an age of the world in which the people know us not, — or knowing, laugh us all to scorn."