and spectres do, leaving
him at liberty to pursue his quest, with no impediment except the crowd
that blocked up the footway.

He had not gone far when the peasant and the contadina met him. They
were still hand in hand, and appeared to be straying through the
grotesque and animated scene, taking as little part in it as himself. It
might be because he recognized them, and knew their solemn secret, that
the sculptor fancied a melancholy emotion to be expressed by the very
movement and attitudes of these two figures; and even the grasp of their
hands, uniting them so closely, seemed to set them in a sad remoteness
from the world at which they gazed.

"I rejoice to meet you," said Kenyon. But they looked at him through the
eye-holes of their black masks, without answering a word.

"Pray give me a little light on the matter which I have so much at
heart," said he; "if you know anything of Hilda, for Heaven's sake,
speak!"

Still they were silent; and the sculptor began to imagine that he
must have mistaken the identity of these figures, there being such a
multitude in similar costume. Yet there was no other Donatello, no other
Miriam. He felt, too, that spiritual certainty which impresses us with
the presence of our friends, apart from any testimony of the senses.

"You are unkind," resumed he,--"knowing the anxiety which oppresses me,
--not to relieve it, if in your power."

The reproach evidently had its effect; for the contadina now spoke, and
it was Miriam's voice.

"We gave you all the light we could," said she. "You are yourself
unkind, though you little think how much so, to come between us at this
hour. There may be a sacred hour, even in carnival time."

In another state of mind, Kenyon could have been amused by the
impulsiveness of this response, and a sort of vivacity that he had
often noted in Miriam's conversation. But he was conscious of a profound
sadness in her tone, overpowering its momentary irritation, and assuring
him that a pale, tear-stained face was hidden behind her mask.

"Forgive me!" said he.

Donatello here extended his hand,--not that which was clasping
Miriam's,--and she, too, put her free one into the sculptor's left; so
that they were a linked circle of three, with many reminiscences and
forebodings flashing through their hearts. Kenyon knew intuitively that
these once familiar friends were parting with him now.

"Farewell!" they all three said, in the same breath.

No sooner