ed to mount.
Roma was looking at the boy with pitying eyes.

"How long have you been here?" she asked.

"Ten years, Excellency," he replied.

He was just twelve years of age and both his parents were dead.

"Poor little fellow!" said Roma, and before David Rossi could prevent
her she was emptying her purse into the boy's hand.

They set off at a trot, and for some time they did not exchange a word.
The sun was sinking and the golden day was dying down. Over the broad
swell of the Campagna, treeless, houseless, a dull haze was creeping
like a shroud, and the long knotted grass was swept by the chill breath
of evening. Nothing broke the wide silence of the desolate space except
the lowing of cattle, the bleat of sheep that were moving in masses like
the woolly waves of a sea, the bark of big white dogs, the shouts of
cowherds carrying long staves, and of shepherds riding on shaggy ponies.
Here and there were wretched straw huts, with groups of fever-stricken
people crouching over the embers of miserable fires, and here and there
were dirty pothouses, which alternated with wooden crosses of the Christ
and grass-covered shrines of the Madonna.

The rhythm of the saddles ceased and the horses walked.

"Was that the place where you were brought up?" said Roma.

"Yes."

"And those were the people who sold you into slavery, so to speak?"

"Yes."

"And you could have confounded them with one word, and did not!"

"What was the use? Besides, they were not the first offenders."

"No; your father was more to blame. Don't you feel sometimes as if you
could hate him for what he has made you suffer?"

David Rossi shook his head. "I was saved from that bitterness by the
saint who saved me from so much besides. 'Don't try to find out who
your father is, David,' he said, 'and if by chance you ever do find out,
don't return evil for evil, and don't avenge yourself on the world.
By-and-bye the world will know you for what you are yourself, not for
what your father is. Perhaps your father is a bad man, perhaps he isn't.
Leave him to God!'"

"It's a terrible thing to think evil of one's own father, isn't it?"
said Roma, but David Rossi did not reply.

"And then--who knows?--perhaps some day you may discover that your
father deserved your love and pity after all."

"Perhaps!"

They had drawn up at another house under a thick clump of eucalyptus
trees. It was the Trappist Monastery of Tre Fontane. Silence was
everywhere i