nderstood and
trotted off after the unconscious friar.

Lysidice had not to wait long for knowledge. In a few minutes the boy
came back and told her what she wanted to know; the friar had
disappeared within the doors of a little church by the sea-shore, not
many yards distant, a church under the charge of an austere religious,
Father Hieronymus. Delighted, Lysidice gave the urchin his piece of
silver and scurried hot-foot home.

Robert, on his side--for the friar was, indeed, he who wore the fool's
face--had seen Lysidice as she passed him, and had pulled his cowl
closer about his face. He did not think she had seen him, deceived by
her indifferent air and gait, and when he left the market bearing his
burden of white roses, though he glanced behind him now and then, he saw
nothing of Lycabetta's woman, and believed himself in security. It was,
therefore, with a contented mind that he pushed open a doorway in the
little church by the sea, and passed from the bright sunlight into the
cool shade of the pillared place.

With a contented mind! A month had wrought great changes in him. On the
night when the two fugitives sped through the darkness and threw
themselves on the protection of Father Hieronymus, Robert's brain,
reeling from rebellion and despair to surrender, was too distraught to
entertain much else than the wild desire to save Perpetua. But in the
mild twilight of the holy place, under the calm authority of Hieronymus,
there came to him a strength, a courage of a kind that he had never
known before. Hieronymus had welcomed the suppliants. The church
communicated through its crypt with some of the many catacombs that
pierced the hills of Syracuse into a labyrinth; in one of these it was
easy to conceal Perpetua with safety and with some degree of comfort. As
for the fool, the church just needed a sacristan; a friar's robe was
soon found and fitted; a brown hood concealed the ugly, haggard face,
and the cripple Diogenes, who had been Robert the King, became the
willing, patient servant of the little church by the sea.

Robert stood there in the church newly importuned by the memories of a
month that had seemed at once as brief as a noon-day dream and yet to
stretch into an age-long quiet. He recalled the gentle gravity with
which Hieronymus had listened to the tale of flight, and had forgiven
him in the name of Heaven for a fraud that had saved from dishonor the
body of a Christian maid. He recalled the gentle