rlooked the red roofs of Florence deep
below.

The ancient bell of the monastery clanged out the hour of evening
prayer, as it had done for centuries, sounding loud and far through
the dry, clear evening atmosphere.

Five minutes after ringing the clanging bell at the monastery door and
being inspected by a brother through the small iron grill, I found
myself with Fra Pacifico in his scrupulously clean narrow cell, with
its truckle bed and its praying stool set before the crucifix, but on
hearing hurried footsteps in the stone corridor outside I rose, and my
strange friend exclaimed in Italian:

"No, Signor Hargreave! Remain seated. I am excused from attendance in
the chapel. I had to meet you."

The narrow little cubicle was bare and whitewashed. Fra Pacifico, of
the Capuchin Order, with his shaven head, his brown habit tied around
the waist with a hempen rope, and his well-worn sandals, had long
been my friend. Of his past I could never ascertain anything. He had
called humbly upon my father when we first went to live at old-world
Signa, years before, and he had asked his charity for the poor down in
the Val d'Arno.

"You will always have beggars around you, signore," I remembered he
said. "We up at the monastery keep open house for the needy--soup,
bread, and other things--to all who come from eight to ten o'clock in
the morning. If you grant us alms we will see that those who beg of
you never go empty away. Send them to us."

My father saw instantly an easy way out of the great beggar problem,
hence he promised him a fixed subscription each month, which Fra
Pacifico regularly collected.

So though I had returned to live in London and afterwards played my
part in the war, we had still been friends.

On my arrival at Pisa I had made an appointment to see him, and as we
now sat together in his narrow cell, I questioned him whether, by mere
chance, he had ever heard of a certain lady named Yolanda Romanelli.
It was quite a chance shot of mine, but I knew that he came from the
same district as the lady.

He was evasive. He had heard of her, he admitted, but would go no
further.

His attitude concerning the lady I had mentioned filled me with
curiosity.

In his coarse brown habit and hood he had always been a mystery to me.
He was about forty-five years of age. He knew English, and spoke it as
well as he did French, for, though a monk, he was a classical scholar
and a keen student of modern science.

"No