body, for the sake of
the immortal spirit that might otherwise be lost forever? Would not the
kind old priest, himself, deem this to be infinitely the kindest service
that he could perform for the stray lamb, who had so strangely sought
his aid?

If these suppositions were well founded, Hilda was most likely a
prisoner in one of the religious establishments that are so numerous in
Rome. The idea, according to the aspect in which it was viewed, brought
now a degree of comfort, and now an additional perplexity. On the one
hand, Hilda was safe from any but spiritual assaults; on the other,
where was the possibility of breaking through all those barred portals,
and searching a thousand convent cells, to set her free?

Kenyon, however, as it happened, was prevented from endeavoring to
follow out this surmise, which only the state of hopeless uncertainty,
that almost bewildered his reason, could have led him for a moment
to entertain. A communication reached him by an unknown hand, in
consequence of which, and within an hour after receiving it, he took his
way through one of the gates of Rome.

CHAPTER XLVI

A WALK ON THE CAMPAGNA

It was a bright forenoon of February; a month in which the brief
severity of a Roman winter is already past, and when violets and daisies
begin to show themselves in spots favored by the sun. The sculptor came
out of the city by the gate of San Sebastiano, and walked briskly along
the Appian Way.

For the space of a mile or two beyond the gate, this ancient and famous
road is as desolate and disagreeable as most of the other Roman avenues.
It extends over small, uncomfortable paving-stones, between brick and
plastered walls, which are very solidly constructed, and so high as
almost to exclude a view of the surrounding country. The houses are of
most uninviting aspect, neither picturesque, nor homelike and social;
they have seldom or never a door opening on the wayside, but are
accessible only from the rear, and frown inhospitably upon the traveller
through iron-grated windows. Here and there appears a dreary inn or a
wine-shop, designated by the withered bush beside the entrance, within
which you discern a stone-built and sepulchral interior, where guests
refresh themselves with sour bread and goats'-milk cheese, washed down
with wine of dolorous acerbity.

At frequent intervals along the roadside up-rises the ruin of an ancient
tomb. As they stand now, these structures are imm