rm and saying, 'Yes, yes, I know.' What did she know? Why, the simple
fact that Rosa was no longer a little girl to be petted, but a grown-up
girl to be insulted. I learned a similar thing had happened once or
twice in the last few months. You see, the girl was neither in one class
nor the other. A young Genoese will not look at a girl who lives in
those houses along the Front. He thinks they are all rotten bad. As for
the foreigners she met in the 'Isle o' Man,' I needn't tell you what an
average Englishman thinks of foreign women.

"I told the Chief about it next day, and he looked up sharp from his
plate when I mentioned Croasan. He said hard things of Croasan. 'Think
of that?' says he. 'An old chap wi' married daughters!' 'Huh!' says the
Second. 'They're aye the wurrs't. But I'm glad ye punched him, mister,'
he says. 'Many a time I'd ha' done the same, only we were on articles.
Rosa, too!'

"'Ay,' says the Chief, 'but Rosa'll have to put up with men clawin' her
now.'

"It was my intention, to avoid trouble and talk, to keep away from the
'Isle o' Man' for the future, but it turned out otherwise. I'd got leave
from the Chief on Thursday afternoon to go up to the Cathedral of San
Lorenzo to see the Holy Grail. They keep it in the Treasury there and
show it on Thursdays for a franc. Most Englishmen laugh at these tales
of the Church, and even Catholics I have met tell me they don't believe
in miracles. I don't know why; I'm interested in them. Sometimes I get a
glimpse of the state of mind in which they are reasonable and necessary
things. The more we learn the less we know. They say that saints,
because they led good lives and kept away from evil, were able to
perform miracles. Why should a statement like that annoy anybody? Good
is a power and evil is a power. Why deny it? I read a book the other day
in which the author, a German with a name like a lady's sneeze, denies
the existence of good and evil. Humph! It's a long time since I read
Hegel, but I don't think he was ever as mad as that!

"I was coming through the church after quitting the sacristan, when I
caught sight of a girl kneeling on the steps of the Chapel of St. John.
I suppose you know that the Precursor is buried in this church? They
show you a silver box with a chain round it, the chain that bound him in
prison. There were other women in the church, but this girl was not in
the chapel, only kneeling on the step outside. Women, you see, are not
allo