anything special turns
up. Wait a minute; th-this is the address."

He tore a leaf out of his pocket-book and wrote a few words in pencil.

"I have it already," she said in a dull, quiet voice.

"H-have you? Well, there it is, anyway. Come, Martini. Sh-sh-sh! Don't
let the door creak!"

They crept softly downstairs. When the street door clicked behind them
she went back into the room and mechanically unfolded the paper he had
put into her hand. Underneath the address was written:

"I will tell you everything there."

CHAPTER II.

IT was market-day in Brisighella, and the country folk had come in from
the villages and hamlets of the district with their pigs and poultry,
their dairy produce and droves of half-wild mountain cattle. The
market-place was thronged with a perpetually shifting crowd, laughing,
joking, bargaining for dried figs, cheap cakes, and sunflower seeds. The
brown, bare-footed children sprawled, face downward, on the pavement in
the hot sun, while their mothers sat under the trees with their baskets
of butter and eggs.

Monsignor Montanelli, coming out to wish the people "Good-morning," was
at once surrounded by a clamourous throng of children, holding up for
his acceptance great bunches of irises and scarlet poppies and sweet
white narcissus from the mountain slopes. His passion for wild flowers
was affectionately tolerated by the people, as one of the little follies
which sit gracefully on very wise men. If anyone less universally
beloved had filled his house with weeds and grasses they would have
laughed at him; but the "blessed Cardinal" could afford a few harmless
eccentricities.

"Well, Mariuccia," he said, stopping to pat one of the children on the
head; "you have grown since I saw you last. And how is the grandmother's
rheumatism?"

"She's been better lately, Your Eminence; but mother's bad now."

"I'm sorry to hear that; tell the mother to come down here some day and
see whether Dr. Giordani can do anything for her. I will find somewhere
to put her up; perhaps the change will do her good. You are looking
better, Luigi; how are your eyes?"

He passed on, chatting with the mountaineers. He always remembered
the names and ages of the children, their troubles and those of their
parents; and would stop to inquire, with sympathetic interest, for the
health of the cow that fell sick at Christmas, or of the rag-doll that
was crushed under a cart-wheel last market-day.

When he retu