g the town
Benedetto was seen by two or three women of Jenne. The secular garments
filled them with amazement; they concluded he had been excommunicated
and allowed him to pass in silence.

A few steps beyond, some one who was running overtook him. It was a
slender, fair lad, with blue eyes full of intelligence.

"Are you going to Rome, Signor Maironi?" he said.

"I beg you not to call me by that name!" Benedetto answered, ill-pleased
to find that his name, who knows by what means, had been revealed. "I do
not yet know whether I go to Rome."

"I shall follow you," the young man said, impulsively.

"You will follow me? But why should you follow me?"

In reply the young man took his hand, and, in spite of Benedetto's
resistance and protests, raised it to his lips.

"Why?" said he. "Because I am sick of the world, and could not find
God, and to-day it Seems to me that, through you, I have been born to
happiness! Please, please, let me follow you!

"_Caro_ [dear one];" Benedetto replied, greatly moved, "I myself do not
know whither I shall go!"

The young man entreated him to say, at least, when he should see him
again, and exclaimed, seeing Benedetto really did not know what to
answer:

"Oh! I shall see you in Rome! You will surely go to Rome!"

Benedetto smiled:

"In Rome? And how will you find me there?"

The lad answered that he would certainly be talked of in Rome, that
every one would know where to find him.

"If it be God's will!" said Benedetto, with an affectionate gesture of
farewell.

The lad detained him a moment, holding his hand.

"I am a Lombard also," said he. "I am Alberti, from Milan. Do not forget
me!"

And his intense gaze followed Benedetto until he disappeared at a bend
of the mule-path.

* * * * *

At sight of the cross with its great arms, rising on the brow of the
hill, Benedetto suddenly shuddered with emotion, and was obliged to
stop. When he once more started forward he was seized with giddiness.
Swaying, he stepped aside a few yards, leaving the way free for
passers-by, and sank upon the grass, In a hollow of the field. Then,
closing his eyes, he realised that this was no passing disturbance, but
something far more serious. He did not become entirely unconscious, but
he lost the sense of hearing and of touch, his memory, and all account
of time. When he first recovered his senses, the feeling on the backs of
his hands, of the coarse cloth,