hat has that old priest been saying to her in the confession?" said
Father Antonio to himself. "I dare say he cannot understand her. She is
as pure as a dew-drop on a cobweb, and as delicate; and these priests,
half of them don't know how to handle the Lord's lambs.--Come now,
little Agnes," he said, with a coaxing tone, "what is its trouble?--tell
its old uncle,--there's a dear!"

"Ah, uncle, I can't!" said Agnes, between her sobs.

"Can't tell its uncle!--there's a pretty go! Perhaps you will tell
grandmamma?"

"Oh, no, no, no! not for the world!" said Agnes, sobbing still more
bitterly.

"Why, really, little heart of mine, this is getting serious," said the
monk; "let your old uncle try to help you."

"It isn't for myself," said Agnes, endeavoring to check her
feelings,--"it is not for myself,--it is for another,--for a soul lost.
Ah, my Jesus, have mercy!"

"A soul lost? Our Mother forbid!" said the monk, crossing himself.
"Lost in this Christian land, so overflowing with the beauty of the
Lord?--lost out of this fair sheepfold of Paradise?"

"Yes, lost," said Agnes, despairingly,--"and if somebody do not save
him, lost forever; and it is a brave and noble soul, too,--like one of
the angels that fell."

"Who is it, dear?--tell me about it," said the monk. "I am one of the
shepherds whose place it is to go after that which is lost, even till I
find it."

"Dear uncle, you remember the youth who suddenly appeared to us in the
moonlight here a few evenings ago?"

"Ah, indeed!" said the monk,--"what of him?"

"Father Francesco has told me dreadful things of him this morning."

"What things?"

"Uncle, he is excommunicated by our Holy Father the Pope."

Father Antonio, as a member of one of the most enlightened and
cultivated religious orders of the times, and as an intimate companion
and disciple of Savonarola, had a full understanding of the character of
the reigning Pope, and therefore had his own private opinion of how much
his excommunication was likely to be worth in the invisible world. He
knew that the same doom had been threatened towards his saintly master,
for opposing and exposing the scandalous vices which disgraced the high
places of the Church; so that, on the whole, when he heard that this
young man was excommunicated, so far from being impressed with horror
towards him, he conceived the idea that he might be a particularly
honest fellow and good Christian. But then he did not hold it wise