down my backbone and tingles at my
finger-tips. Jesu, save us!'

'Save us!' repeated Farina, with the echo of a deadened soul.

They made the sign of the Cross, and purified the place with holy
ejaculations.

'I 've seen him at last; grant it be for the last time! That's my
prayer, in the name of the Virgin and Trinity,' said Guy. 'And now let's
retrace our steps: perchance we shall hunt up that bauble of yours, but
I'm not fit for mortal work this night longer.'

Burdened by their black encounter, the two passed again behind the
Cathedral. Farina's hungry glances devoured each footmark of their
track. Where the moon held no lantern for him, he went on his knees,
and groped for his lost treasure with a miser's eager patience of agony,
drawing his hand slowly over the stony kerb and between the interstices
of the thick-sown flints, like an acute-feeling worm. Despair grew heavy
in his breast. At every turning he invoked some good new saint to aid
him, and ran over all the propitiations his fancy could suggest and his
religious lore inspire. By-and-by they reached the head of the street
where Margarita dwelt. The moon was dipping down, and paler, as if
touched with a warning of dawn. Chill sighs from the open land
passed through the spaces of the city. On certain coloured gables and
wood-crossed fronts, the white light lingered; but mostly the houses
were veiled in dusk, and Gottlieb's house was confused in the twilight
with those of his neighbours, notwithstanding its greater stateliness
and the old grandeur of its timbered bulk. They determined to take up
their position there again, and paced on, Farina with his head below his
shoulders, and Guy nostril in air, as if uneasy in his sense of smell.

On the window-ledge of a fair-fitted domicile stood a flower-pot, a rude
earthen construction in the form of a river-barge, wherein grew some
valley lilies that drooped their white bells over the sides.

The Goshawk eyed them wistfully.

'I must smell those blessed flowers if I wish to be saved!' and he
stamped resolve with his staff.

Moved by this exclamation, Farina gazed up at them.

'How like a company of maidens they look floating in the vessel of
life!' he said.

Guy curiously inspected Farina and the flower-pot, shrugged, and with
his comrade's aid, mounted to a level with it, seized the prize and
redescended.

'There,' he cried, between long luxurious sniffs, 'that chases him out
of the nostril sooner th