ellent. "A
bad, bad village," said the father, looking about him as if in search of
something.

"Margherita!" he cried suddenly.

An old woman appeared, dropping a bleared courtesy, unlike her queenly
name.

"What have you for dinner, Margherita?

"Enough for one; not enough for three, and they hungry off the road,"
she said. "If thou, O father, art about to feed the _lazzaroni_ of the
north and south thou must at least give some notice, and engage another
servant!"

"Nay, good Margherita," answered the priest very meekly, "there is
enough boiled fowl and risotto of liver and rice to serve half a score
of appetites. See to it," he said.

Margherita went grumbling away. What with beggars and leaping dogs,
besides children crawling about the steps, it was ill living in such a
presbytery--one also which was at any rate so old that no one could keep
it clean, though they laboured twenty-four hours in the day--ay, and
rose betimes upon the next day.

As the lady said, the place was old. Father Philip told us that it had
been the wing of a monastery.

"See," he said, "I will show you."

So saying, he led us through a wide, cool, dusky place, with arched roof
and high windows, the walls blotched and peeling, with the steam of many
monkish dinners. The doors had been mostly closed up, and only at one
side did an open window and archway give glimpses of pillared cloisters
and living green. We begged that we might sit out here, which the priest
gladly allowed, for the sight of the green grass and the tall white
lilies standing amid was a mighty refreshment in the hot noontide.
Sunshine flickered through the mulberry and one grey cherry-tree, and
sifted down on the grass.

Then the priest told us all the sin of the villagers of Spellino. It
was not that a remnant of the Waldenses was allowed to live there. The
priest did not object to good Waldensians. But the people of Spellino
would neither pay priest nor pastor. They were infidels.

"A bad people, an accursed people!" he repeated. "I have not had my dues
for ten years as I ought. I send my agent to collect; and as soon as he
appears, every family that is of the religion turns heretic. Not a child
can sign the sign of the Cross, not though I baptized every one of them.
All the men belong to the church of Pastor Gentinetta, and can repeat
his catechism."

The priest paused and shook his head.

"A bad people! a bad people!" he said over and over again. Then he
s