8 STRAY-AWAYS 



Looking at Anastasia, I remembered a summer 

 evening when I went to a Mission Service in a white- 

 washed chapel, and saw the burly Mission Priest 

 standing before the Altar in liis soutane, with the 

 biretta forming an uncompromising summit to a 

 square and threatening countenance of the bulldog 

 type. The seatless floor of the chapel was covered 

 with kneeling women and girls, in dun-coloured shawls 

 or fashionable hats; the men stood at the back and 

 along the walls, where the reds and blues of the 

 Stations of the Cross flared forth their story. Even 

 in their crude presentment of anguish, they seemed 

 to say, " It is sown in weakness," but the oratory 

 of the Missioner was a thunderstorm above them. 

 Young men and young women were not to walk 

 together in woods, or lanes, or after nightfall; the 

 matter was made very clear, and was illustrated with 

 stories appropriate to it. The audience was eager 

 in the up-take, pliant and sensitive to every gi-ade of 

 thunder. 



" I knew a most respectable young man," narrated 

 the Missioner, " and his wife, a decent young girl ; 

 they had a nice young family." The congregation 

 laughed delightedly and sympathetically, and the 

 Missioner glowered upon them. This was not going 

 to be a laughing matter. Soon there was drink in 

 it, and a Protestant somewhere, I think; worse 

 things followed. " The two of them are burning 

 together in the flames of Purgatory," concluded the 

 Missioner, with ferocity, and rumbled at them like 

 an angry bull. The women swayed and groaned in 

 horror, and ejaculated prayers. 



I saw the congregation go home in the dusk, the 

 women walking in parties by themselves, the men 

 silently passing the public-house as if it had Dhroch 

 hool, which means the Evil Eye. 



