you never see them now?"

"Never. I shall not see them any more. They are there, I know; but I
have not the eyes to see them. I see quite other things."

"What do you see?"

"I, carino? I see a blue sky and a snow-mountain--that is all when I
look up into the heights. But down there it is different."

He pointed to the valley below them. Arthur knelt down and bent over
the sheer edge of the precipice. The great pine trees, dusky in the
gathering shades of evening, stood like sentinels along the narrow banks
confining the river. Presently the sun, red as a glowing coal, dipped
behind a jagged mountain peak, and all the life and light deserted the
face of nature. Straightway there came upon the valley something
dark and threatening--sullen, terrible, full of spectral weapons. The
perpendicular cliffs of the barren western mountains seemed like the
teeth of a monster lurking to snatch a victim and drag him down into the
maw of the deep valley, black with its moaning forests. The pine
trees were rows of knife-blades whispering: "Fall upon us!" and in the
gathering darkness the torrent roared and howled, beating against its
rocky prison walls with the frenzy of an everlasting despair.

"Padre!" Arthur rose, shuddering, and drew back from the precipice. "It
is like hell."

"No, my son," Montanelli answered softly, "it is only like a human
soul."

"The souls of them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death?"

"The souls of them that pass you day by day in the street."

Arthur shivered, looking down into the shadows. A dim white mist was
hovering among the pine trees, clinging faintly about the desperate
agony of the torrent, like a miserable ghost that had no consolation to
give.

"Look!" Arthur said suddenly. "The people that walked in darkness have
seen a great light."

Eastwards the snow-peaks burned in the afterglow. When the red light had
faded from the summits Montanelli turned and roused Arthur with a touch
on the shoulder.

"Come in, carino; all the light is gone. We shall lose our way in the
dark if we stay any longer."

"It is like a corpse," Arthur said as he turned away from the spectral
face of the great snow-peak glimmering through the twilight.

They descended cautiously among the black trees to the chalet where they
were to sleep.

As Montanelli entered the room where Arthur was waiting for him at the
supper table, he saw that the lad seemed to have shaken off the ghostly
fancies of t