t,
through the picturesque hamlet of Buonconvento. Here they changed their
horse and left the Roman highway for the road cut in the rocks five
centuries ago by the monks of Monte Oliveto. These pious men understood
little of engineering, of the art of throwing bridges across ravines.
Their road simply followed the course pointed out by nature, winding in
serpentine folds through the labyrinth of chasms which begin at
Buonconvento.

It was toward evening when the party drove over a narrow bridge across a
half-filled moat, and under the arch of a massive crenellated tower
whose unguarded gates stood wide open. A hundred years ago they would
have found the portcullis drawn, and, being women, if they had attempted
to force an entrance would have been excommunicated, for until the
suppression no woman's foot was allowed across this threshold. The tower
was built as a protection against bandits, and the grated windows which
give it a sinister look to-day lighted the cells of refractory brothers,
placed here to catch the eye of novices as they entered the outer portal
and serve as a silent warning.

The convent was still invisible, and our three visitors were speculating
on what they would find at the end of the grass-grown _allee_ bordered
with cypresses, when they saw, in a ravine below, a white-robed figure
hastening toward them.

"That must be the Padre Abbate," one of them exclaimed. "I hope he has
received our padre's letter telling of our coming, for it would be worse
than an attack of the bandits of old, our falling upon him at this hour
on a Saturday evening without any warning."

They had alighted in front of the church when the padre arrived quite
out of breath,--a tall, stately old man, with white hair flowing over
the turned-back cowl of his spotless white robe. If they had known
nothing of him before, his courtly manner and easy reception would have
revealed his noble lineage.

"Be welcome, be welcome, my daughters, to the lonely Thebaid. I have
received the padre's letter, and am happy to receive his friends as my
honored guests for a month, if you can support the solitude so long," he
added, smiling. "And, now, which is the signora, and which the Signorina
Giulia and the Signorina Margherita?"

"I am the signora," said one of the three, laughing, the last one would
have suspected of being a matron. She had lost her husband at twenty,
and her four years of European travel had been a seeking after
forgetf