ness. Noemi, who was standing near, took heart.

"I also must ask for five minutes," she said in French, blushing; and
then it immediately occurred to her she had thus shown that she knew
him to be a man of culture; her face was aflame, as she repeated her
petition in Italian.

Almost involuntarily Don Clemente pressed Benedetto's arm gently.
Benedetto replied courteously, but somewhat drily:

"Do you wish to do a kind action? Care for that poor girl."

And he passed on.

He and Don Clemente entered the hovel alone. No one had followed them.
An old woman, the sick man's mother, seeing him enter, threw herself
weeping at his feet, repeating her daughter's words:

"Are you the holy man? Are you he? You have healed one of my children,
now heal this one also."

At first, coming from the sunlight into that darkness, Benedetto could
not distinguish anything, but presently he saw the man stretched on the
bed; he was breathing hard, groaning and crying, and cursing the Saints,
women, the village of Jenne, and his own unhappy fate. On her knees
beside the bed, Maria Selva was wiping the sweat from his brow with
a handkerchief. There was no one else in the cave. Near the luminous
entrance the great cross, carved unevenly on the wall of yellowish
stone, was repeating at that moment a dark and solemn word.

"Hope in God!" Benedetto answered the old woman gently. He went to the
bed, bent over the sick man and felt his pulse. The old woman stopped
crying, the sufferer stopped cursing and groaning. The buzzing of flies
in the light fireplace could be heard.

"Have you sent for the doctor?" Benedetto whispered.

The old woman began to sob again,

"You heal him! You heal him! in the name of Jesus and Mary!"

Again the sick man's groans were heard. Maria Selva said softly to
Benedetto:

"The doctor is in Subiaco. Signor Selva, whom you perhaps know, has gone
to the chemist's. I am his wife."

At this point Giovanni returned, out of breath and worried. The
chemist's shop was closed, the chemist absent. The parish priest had
given him some Marsala, and some tourists from Rome, who had brought
plenty of provisions, had given him brandy and coffee. Benedetto
beckoned Don Clemente to his side, and whispered to him to bring the
parish priest, for the man was dying. He would go for him himself, but
it seemed cruel to the poor mother to leave them. Don Clemente went out
without a word. A few steps from the hut, the party of smar