"Keep your head, Father. There is a fire in the church basement now, right under your feet. The firemen are working on it, but can't put it out. We have stopped people from coming in to stampede the others. The galleries are filled with the children, and we have to get them out, first. If there is a rush the children will be killed at the bottom of the gallery stairs, where they meet the people from the body of the church out in that vestibule. The chief sent me to you to tell you to go on preaching and hold the grown folks down stairs for ten minutes. The firemen will get the little ones out without noise or fuss, if you can keep the attention of the people. I'll whisper 'all right' to you when they are gone. Then you tell the rest to file out quietly. It is the only chance you have to save those children in this ramshackle old building, so you preach for all you are worth and don't let the people look up at the galleries. There will be hundreds of little ones owe their lives to you, Father, if you can hold the fort."
The Sacristan left and, with a gasp of horror, the priest thought of the galleries emptying into the little vestibule and meeting a rush of the people from the church.
Father Collins took off his chasuble and maniple and placed them upon the altar. He wondered at his own coolness. He advanced to the front of the altar platform, opening his book; but he closed it again coolly. Then, in a clear voice, that reached every corner of the building, which he could not believe was his own, he began.
"On second thought, my friends," he said, "I will not read the Epistle or the Gospel to-day. I have a few words to say to you, though a sermon is not expected at this Mass."
In a front pew Doctor Reilly and Mr. O'Brien groaned softly. They had been caught by the dreaded sermon.
Father Collins announced his text. The congregation was surprised that it was to have a sermon instead of the usual reading, but it was more surprised at the change in Father Collins; so much, indeed, that it was almost breathless. The priest glanced up at the gallery, quickly, and saw that the children had begun to leave the rear pews. He had ten minutes to fill in. The people below could see only the front rows of the gallery, which in this church, built in the old style, ran on three sides. So Father Collins preached. It was the sermon he had prepared for the High Mass, but which he could not deliver. The beauty of it had been plain to Father Grady when he read it; but it was plainer to the enraptured congregation which sat listening to every syllable. Neither the Doctor nor Mr. O'Brien attempted to sleep. In fact there were no sleepers at all, for upright in the pews sat every man and woman, hanging on the preacher's words.