Brother Clary felt the wind rise up, a cool wind, like the breath of heaven.  It had been a good meeting tonight, and the tent was now empty of all but the rickety folding chairs he was picking up and carrying out to his beat-up old Ford truck.  A sound made him harken, and he saw an old man in a shabby jacket and patched trousers, the wind ruffling the thin white strands of hair left to the oldster.  The old man held something small in a rough canvas wrap, an old feed sack from the look of it.  "Preacher,"  he said, "I found this in a stricken tree, after a storm.  It was grown into the tree, an old cottonwood.  Seems to be the sort of thing you might know about better."

He handed over the package, which weighed about half a pound and was about the size of a man's hand.  In the lamplight, weak though it was, Brother Clary could see the gleam of gold, and the shape of a cross.  It was set with an emerald the size of his littlest fingernail, and it had a gold chain - broken, about five inches long, attached to it.  There was engraving on it, ornate curls in cursive writing deeply bitten into the gold, and it wasn't English.  It was Spanish, and Latin too, from the look of it.

Forcing his eyes from the priceless gift, he looked up at his surprise benefactor.  "Much obliged," he managed to say, barely finding even those words.

After a moment of studying the man, the Texas preacher found that curiosity got the better of him.  "Where did you find this again?"
This message was last edited by the player at 02:18, Sun 05 Dec 2004.

Brother Clary looked up, and was addressing thin air.

There was no sign that the old man had ever been there, only the snow-scented wind that made the lanterns swing gently.  But the weight of the cross was solid in his palm, the links jingling, the emerald gleaming a soft, warm green.

Not knowing quite what else to do, but understanding that this item, if genuine, was certainly a priceless relic from an earlier time, Brother Clary finds a scrap piece of paper and begins to carefully copy the inscription on the cross as best he can.  Then, wrapping the cross back in the rough coverings he received it in, he looked about for a suitable place to secure it.  His eyes fell on his truck.  "Hmm.  The wheel well would be good, but there's too much of a chance it'll fall out on some of these rough roads...what about the seat?"  Lifting the back of the forward, he wedges the package in the coils, then sets the seat back in place.

Then he climbs in, starts the engine, and makes his way to the nearest Catholic church.

Brother Clary had to drive 237 miles to get to a Catholic Church, and it took until the next day to make it happen.  The place was a small whitewashed church, with an amiable-looking 40-ish man in overalls tending a vegetable garden around the back of the church, not far from a tidy little cottage.  At the appearance of the preacher, the fellow straightened up from hoeing the beans and smiled.

"Good day to you," the man said, his accent Damyankee but his manners nice enough. "Can I help you at all ?  My name is Father Dean."