Sophia stayed with us last night. Not having been to bed till 2, we all slept out till 12 Mass at Cathedral. There was a wonderful practice for the Christmas celebrations – Schubert’s Mass which Páp is doing with 8 in band and over 80 boys and women. It was glorious. I am at my old post of turning over and managing the ‘Walzer’ [roller]. At dinner Sophie told great stories about Prof. Stockley. During the terrible trouble of 1921 he was shot at 4 times, the bullets striking once off a safety-pin and another time off a sacred heart badge he was wearing. He had other miraculous escapes. In his previous life he travelled to Canada over 5 times and has an extraordinary story of how the ship on which he was sailing with 300 passengers foundered off Belle Isle, Newfoundland, and even while it was sinking the crew began murdering and plundering. A huge wave, casting them on a rock, gave them a chance of landing, which they did without mishap, but then the ruffians of the crew used the terrible trudge to civilization as a further means of robbing and stealing.
