apartment opening into this had beds for Elsie
and Monica.

The travellers, however, were too much exhausted with their night-ride
to be critical, the services of disrobing and preparing for rest were
quickly concluded, and in less than an hour all were asleep, while
Agostino was busy concerting the means for an immediate journey to
Florence.

CHAPTER XXX.

"LET US ALSO GO, THAT WE MAY DIE WITH HIM."

Father Antonio sat alone in his cell in the San Marco in an attitude of
deep dejection. The open window looked into the garden of the convent,
from which steamed up the fragrance of violet, jasmine, and rose, and
the sunshine lay fair on all that was without. On a table beside him
were many loose and scattered sketches, and an unfinished page of
the Breviary he was executing, rich in quaint tracery of gold and
arabesques, seemed to have recently occupied his attention, for his
palette was wet and many loose brushes lay strewed around. Upon the
table stood a Venetian glass with a narrow neck and a bulb clear
and thin as a soap-bubble, containing vines and blossoms of the
passion-flower, which he had evidently been using as models in his work.

The page he was illuminating was the prophetic Psalm which describes the
ignominy and sufferings of the Redeemer. It was surrounded by a wreathed
border of thorn-branches interwoven with the blossoms and tendrils of
the passion-flower, and the initial letters of the first two words were
formed by a curious combination of the hammer, the nails, the spear, the
crown of thorns, the cross, and other instruments of the Passion; and
clear, in red letter, gleamed out those wonderful, mysterious words,
consecrated by the remembrance of a more than mortal anguish,--"My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

The artist-monk had perhaps fled to his palette to assuage the
throbbings of his heart, as a mourning mother flies to the cradle of her
child; but even there his grief appeared to have overtaken him, for the
work lay as if pushed from him in an access of anguish such as comes
from the sudden recurrence of some overwhelming recollection. He was
leaning forward with his face buried in his hands, sobbing convulsively.

The door opened, and a man advancing stealthily behind laid a hand
kindly on his shoulder, saying softly, "So, so, brother!"

Father Antonio looked up, and, dashing his hand hastily across his
eyes, grasped that of the new-comer convulsively, and saying only, "Oh