and you
look worn out. Surely you should take something more, for the very love of
the poor."

"My son, I am bound to do a heavy penance, and to work out a great
conflict. I thank you for your undeserved kindness. Leave me now to
myself, and come no more to disturb my prayers. Go, and God bless you!"

"Well," said the peasant, putting down the basket and melon, "I shall
leave these things here, any way, and I beg your Reverence to have a care
of yourself. Teresina fretted all night for fear something might come to
you. The bambino that you cured is grown a stout little fellow, and eats
enough for two,--and it is all of you; so she cannot forget it. She is a
busy little woman, is Teresina; and when she gets a thought in her head,
it buzzes, buzzes, like a fly in a bottle, and she will have it your
Reverence is killing yourself by inches, and says she, 'What will all the
poor do when he is gone?' So your Reverence must pardon us. We mean it all
for the best."

So saying, the man turned and began sliding and slipping down the steep
ashy sides of the mountain cone with a dexterity which carried him to the
bottom in a few moments; and on he went, sending back after him a cheerful
little air, the refrain of which is still to be heard in our days in that
neighborhood. A word or two of the gay song fluttered back on the ear of
the monk,--

"Tutta gieja, tutta festa."

So gay and airy it was in its ringing cadence that it seemed a musical
laugh springing from sunny skies, and came fluttering into the dismal
smoke and gloom of the mountain-top like a very butterfly of sound. It
struck on the sad, leaden ear of the monk much as we might fancy the carol
of a robin over a grave might seem, could the cold sleeper below wake one
moment to its perception. If it woke one regretful sigh and drew one
wandering look downward to the elysian paradise that lay smiling at the
foot of the mountain, he instantly suppressed the feeling, and set his
face in its old deathly stillness.

CHAPTER XIX.

CLOUDS DEEPENING.

After the departure of her uncle to Florence, the life of Agnes was
troubled and harassed from a variety of causes.

First, her grandmother was sulky and moody, and though saying nothing
directly on the topic nearest her heart, yet intimating by every look and
action that she considered Agnes as a most ungrateful and contumacious
child. Then there was a constant internal perplexity,--a constant wearying
course of sel