ld women were inside, whitewashing the walls. So the
priest did not go quite in but knelt down before a crucifix at the
entrance.

CHAPTER IV.

THE UMBRELLA AND ST. PETER.

Father Janos remained kneeling a long time and did not notice that a
storm was coming up. When he came out of the church it was pouring in
torrents, and before long the small mountain streams were so swollen
that they came rushing down into the village street, and the cattle in
their fright ran lowing into their stables.

Janos's first thought was that he had left the child on the veranda, and
it must be wet through. He ran home as fast as he could, but paused with
surprise before the house. The basket was where he had left it, the
child was in the basket, and the goose was walking about in the yard.
The rain was still coming down in torrents, the veranda was drenched,
but on the child not a drop had fallen, for an immense red umbrella had
been spread over the basket. It was patched and darned to such an extent
that hardly any of the original stuff was left, and the border of
flowers round it was all but invisible.

[Illustration: "THE CHILD WAS IN THE BASKET"]

The young priest raised his eyes in gratitude to Heaven, and taking the
child into his arms, carried it, under the red umbrella, into his room.
The child's eyes were open now; they were a lovely blue, and gazed
wonderingly into the priest's face.

"It is really a blessing," he murmured, "that the child did not get wet
through; she might have caught her death of cold, and I could not even
have given her dry clothes."

But where had the umbrella come from? It was incomprehensible, for in
the whole of Glogova there was not a single umbrella.

In the next yard some peasants were digging holes for the water to run
into. His reverence asked them all in turn, had they seen no one with
the child? No, they had seen the child, but as far as they knew no one
had been near it. Old Widow Adamecz, who had run home from the fields
with a shawl over her head, had seen something red and round, which
seemed to fall from the clouds right over the child's head. Might she
turn to stone that minute if it were not true, and she was sure the
Virgin Mary had sent it down from Heaven herself to the poor orphan
child.

Widow Adamecz was a regular old gossip; she was fond of a drop of brandy
now and then, so it was no wonder she sometimes saw more than she
ought to have done. The summer before, on t