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Show lie walked with bowed head under the weight of public scorn, yet still decided to bold to the end to his role of priest. Perhaps he might have continued to resist re-sist to the end, but for an insult more cruel than all the rest, and which brusquely put to flight all thought of resignation. He received it, this Insult, on the feast day of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, from his sister-in-law, whom he had not seen since the funeral ceremony, and in a casket brought to him by the hands of a domestic He opened it, to find before him the pistol of his dead brother, one which he had carried always In the holster hol-ster at his sa dd la Beside the pistol lay a woman's apron, richly embroidered, and pinned Uxm it that slip from the Montenegrin codo, which Peter but too well remembered: "If you flud among you a coward, take from him his arms or his life and tie a woman's npron about his waist." At the bottom Natalie had added the single word, "Choose!" Tho priest uttered a cry of mingled rngo and sorrow, and, leaving the casket as it had como, was soon at the house of his sister-in-law, "Thou k newest what 1 wish I" she cried, on seeing him enter and without wailing for him to speak; "thou knowest it well, Peter Petrowitehl" and, throwing herself upon her knees In front of him, she clasped his cassock beseechingly. "But this blood," ho said at last, regarding re-garding her with a somber gazo. "this blood thou wishest to be shed knowest thou not it will rebound upon thino own head?" "I know It," she answered, "and for It I alutmlon my hope of heaven. But thou will avenge thyself, when? Peter Petro-witch. Petro-witch. Ml tne, when?" "Dost thou wish me," resumed the priest, "to lire at him from amhiiBcade, liko a bandit of tho mountains? to kill from a hidden lair? No, I will not do 1 1. If it is tho will of God that 1 become tho instrument of Iub vengeance, ho will put him in my way." Several months had passed since this Interview between Peter Petrowitch and his brother's wife, and the fate of the Resurrection was near at hand, a day when tho Montenegrin law commanded a renunciation of all surveillance upon criminals, great or Bmall, In order that the mountain brigands Bhould descend into the villages to partake of Easter communion. com-munion. Dimitri Jegosch -the priest reflected would doubtless be able to make preliminary prelim-inary confession to some mountain hermit, her-mit, but under pain of mortal sin wot bound to come into his parish church to finish his communion. "It is there," ho told himself, "that I must await him!" And on the morning of the fete, before the opening of the high moss, and while tho building was Btill silent nnd empty, he approached the main altar and hid under tho folds of its cloth something which was long and heavy and which he had carried beneath his cassock. The sacristan, busy with the lighting of Ms tapers, had seen neither the coming nor the going of the priest, as he tranquilly returned lo don his sacerdotal vestments. When hecamengain behind his line of chorister boys and singers of thecholr, the church waa filled with worshipers, kneeling upon the stones. Potrowitch passed the chancel gate without lifting hia head, and standing thus, at the foot of the steps, recited tho opening prayers. He had promised himself to refrain till the consecration waa passed; had he seen Dimitri Jegosch before this waa done, he feared that he would not be master of himself, and ho wished neither to Interrupt Inter-rupt the Easier mass nor to touch the I host with ensanguined hands. He remained, then, his eyes when onTpellcd"lo face the people In order to give them his blessing raised to the nave or fastened upon the scroll work of the arch of the door. And even us he had predetermined, when ho himself had taken the communion and it was the turn of the faithful to approach the holy j table, lie lifted, with a hand which did not tremble, the heavy ciboire of conse- crated wafers, nnd from left to right : along the chancel nil! began the distribu- ( tion. j Dimitri Jegosch knelt Uon the carpet ! with tho rest of the faithful; the priest ! saw him but did not stop or hesitate. The words of the administration; "Corpus "Cor-pus Domini nostri, custodial aulmam tuam in vitam eeternaml" oaine without a break or quiver, as tranquilly and solemnly sol-emnly he raised tho chalice to tho murderer's mur-derer's lipa. "Anient" respoded JegoBch, resuming his place. Peter Petrowitch remounted the altar steps. "He has communed," tie thought; "mine enemy he has communed." Behind him rose the swelling tones of the organ chant, then the voices sweet and soft, or joyous and loud, befitting j the songs of an Caster morning, and then Peter Petrowitch turned abouL He had calculated well; in front of hitn stood Dimitri Jegosch, as plainly visible in his tightly buttoned coat as the gaudily arrayed and sacred personages person-ages painted upon the window glass. In another moment a ball from the hand of tho minister of God Btrctched lifeless and bleeding upon the floor of the church the murderer of his brother. Translated for The Argonaut from the French by E. C. Waggener. A MONTENEGRIN TALE. His name was Peter Petrowitch, and he prided himself upon counting nmong his ancestors the illustrious George Tscheruowitch, the prince who, In 151(3. retired to Venice after abdicating his principality ;u favor of tho metropolitan ' (iernianos I lirst encountered Peter Petrowitch at the house of the Abbe Meignan. the worthy chaplain of Saint Louis of Franco, where this Montenegrin priest had come for the ptirose of asking absolution ab-solution for a crime at the hands of the Me He was a man in tho prime of life, but with more tho air of a brigand about him than that of a priest an air which in nowise belied his nature. But hark to the details of a Montenegrin Monte-negrin vengeance, one of many, besido which tho tragic recitals of Corsican vendettas aro but stories for children. Public opinion, according to Colomba, brought about the feud between the Capulets and the Montagues, but even then the peace otlicers were there to I compel the belligerents to return their guns to the racks from which they had taken them. In the country of Petrowitch, Petro-witch, however, the law sanctions ven- geunce, "If you find among you a coward," cow-ard," textnally declares the Montenegrin code, published as the result of the war J of '84, "take from him at once either 1 arms or life; lie is worthy of neither and shall no more enjoy tho public esteem. es-teem. " At the same time iiltneli : about his waist a woman'B npron, lo show that a man's heart no longer bents within his body." The hate was oid between the two 'houses of Tscheruowitch and Jegosch It was brought about by the grandsire of Jegosch, who had said one day. at n reunion of choice spirits, that the descendants de-scendants of the illustrious George "came from the loins of a gypsy." For three generations blood ran like water to ulTaee the insult, and. for u time, It seeuied forgotten; then (he brother of Peter Petrowitch was killed by Dimitri Jegosch on the morning of his marriage with the daughter of the noble line of Radovitsch. As Natalie Radovitsch, of course, had no childrnn and her husband no other brother than Peter Petrowitch, it was he, naturally he, the priest to whom had descended this ancient vengeance of the Tsrlierno witch. The old principality of Montenegro was composed in addition to the Montenegrin Mon-tenegrin noble families of Gve villages adhering lo the old Greek church and five villages to the Roman. Peter Petrowitch Petro-witch was priest of one of thoso hurt named mountain churches. It was, therefore, his own church in which he had conducted the funeral services of his brother, and besido tlfo coffin oTuToclcad he had listened with beating heart to the species of. vocero pronounced by the wife at the sido of the lifeless husband, a vocero vo-cero which recalled in detail the insults received by the Tschernowitch in bygone times at the hands of the Jegosch. "The coward 1" she cried. "He did not even give me the time to become a mother! Too well he knew that a son of mine and of thine would have grown up with the single purpose of extinguishing hia race, and he fancies he lias finished with his debt, because there remain to exact the price of blood but a widow and a priestl But a widow who is now a Tschernowitch and a priest who ia still of thy race!" Kneeling at the foot of the body, Peter was praying with passionate fervor, beseeching be-seeching God to gather the soul of hia brother into Paradise and to give him the strength to resist temptation. But that same day, when erect upon the steps of the altar, he closed the mass to speak to the people the funeral oration, ora-tion, his text, the phrase from the dominical domi-nical prayer: "Forgive us our sins, O Lord, as we forgive those who sin against us!" a freezing silence responded to the words of pardon, and the wife of the I victim, rising from her knees with a gesture of protestation, went from the church to await the cortege before l lie door. From that Instant, life was made Intolerable In-tolerable to Peter Petrowitch. On market mar-ket mornings, when he passed before the shops of his parishionerB, they turned their heads to avoid ealuting him. In church, they rendered him ns;ual their accustomed homage, but bo soon as he came Iroin the presbytery, he saw himself him-self exposed to renewed insults, even the servants of the church, the people of the choir, the chorister boys and sacristan sa-cristan refusing to address bi in a word bf vonrl the necessities of the service. |