Above were sculptured rows of lowering, ape-like faces from Nast's and Keppler's cartoons, and out of these sprang into the vague upper gloom--on the one side, lamp-posts from which negroes hung by the neck, and on the other gibbets for dynamiters and Molly Maguires, and between the two glowed a spectral picture of some black-robed tonsured men, with leering satanic masks, making a bonfire of the Bible in the public schools.
Theron stared this phantasm hard in the face, and recognized it for a very tolerable embodiment of what he had heretofore supposed he thought about the Irish.

For an instant, the sight of it made him shiver, as if the sunny May had of a sudden lapsed back into bleak December.

Then he smiled, and the bad vision went off into space.

He saw instead Father Forbes, in the white and purple vestments, standing by poor MacEvoy's bedside, with his pale, chiselled, luminous, uplifted face, and he heard only the proud, confident clanging of the girl's recital,--BEATUM MICHAELEM ARCHANGELUM, BEATUM JOANNEM BAPTISTAM, PETRUM ET PAULUM--EM!--AM!--UM!--like strokes on a great resonant alarm-bell, attuned for the hearing of heaven.

He caught himself on the very verge of feeling that heaven must have heard.
Then he smiled again, and laid the matter aside, with a parting admission that it had been undoubtedly picturesque and impressive, and that it had been a valuable experience to him to see it.