His hands trembled
violently, his face looked gray and drawn.
"Come on, you brutes," cried the receding man, jerking the thongs
of skin by which he led the goats.
Father Beret rose and turned into his damp little hut, where the
light was dim on the crucifix hanging opposite the door against
the clay-daubed wall. It was a bare, unsightly, clammy room; a
rude bed on one side, a shelf for table and two or three wooden
stools constituting the furniture, while the uneven puncheons of
the floor wabbled and clattered under the priest's feet.
An unopened letter is always a mysterious thing. We who receive
three or four mails every day, scan each little paper square with
a speculative eye. Most of us know what sweet uncertainty hangs on
the opening of envelopes whose contents may be almost anything
except something important, and what a vague yet delicious thrill
comes with the snip of the paper knife; but if we be in a foreign
land and long years absent from home, then is a letter subtly
powerful to move us, even more before it is opened than after it
is read.
It had been many years since a letter from home had come to Father
Beret. The last, before the one now in his hand, had made him ill
of nostalgia, fairly shaking his iron determination never to quit
for a moment his life work as a missionary. Ever since that day he
had found it harder to meet the many and stern demands of a most
difficult and exacting duty.
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