their happiness was complete; and
for three years after her birth the little house on the hill-side was
the home of joy and love and all the pleasant domestic virtues and
graces.

When the child was three years old, the elder Antonia, herself only a
girl, died, after twenty-four hours' fever; and in one black hour Roger
paid for all the sunny days with which Fortune had so lavishly endowed
him.

When at length he summoned up resolution to face the future he
determined, with a passionate desire to carry out his young wife's
unspoken entreaty, to devote himself to his child; and with this
intention he stayed on bravely in the little home from which the
sunshine had departed.

For nearly six years they lived together in the tiny village near
Naples; and gradually the pall began to lift from the young man's
spirit, and the sunshine and the flowers, the blue sky and sea, and the
snow-capped mountains made their appeal once again to the warm, ardent
soul which sorrow had darkened.

During these six years father and daughter had lived frugally, almost as
the peasants lived; yet with a daintiness, an order, which were unknown
to the peasants. The little Antonia--Toni, as they called her--grew
straight and strong as she played on the mountain slopes, or ate the
simple meals of grapes and bread and goat's flesh provided for her by
the old housekeeper, Fiammetta, who ruled both the pretty child and the
handsome young father with a rule of iron which yet made life a very
well-ordered and gracious existence.

But when Toni had almost reached her ninth birthday the change came. The
good old priest died; and with the death of his sole friend Roger Gibbs
found life in the village impossible.

Truth to tell, it was a marvel he had borne it so long. Only a numbing
blow such as he had received could have stunned his faculties into
acquiescence with this sleepy, uneventful existence; and now, suddenly,
his soul awoke from its peaceful slumber and demanded life, and yet more
life.

Italy became all at once unendurable. The nomad spirit was aroused, and
nothing would satisfy the man but a fresh start in life's pilgrimage.

His little daughter, too, must be educated; and although he loved the
child with all the concentrated passion of a man who has lost the woman
of whom the child is his only memento, he yet felt that the time had
come when he must shake himself free from the trammels of domesticity
and live once again the life of