ith
its hungry and angry tide was each hour washing higher and higher up on
the airy shore of the ideal, and bearing the pearls and enchanted shells
of fancy out into its salt and muddy waters.

"Oh, my master, my father!" he said, "is the martyr's crown of fire
indeed waiting thee? Will God desert His own? But was not Christ
crucified?--and the disciple is not above his master, nor the servant
above his lord. But surely Florence will not consent. The whole city
will make a stand for him;--they are ready, if need be, to pluck out
their eyes and give them to him. Florence will certainly be a refuge
for him. But why do I put confidence in man? In the Lord alone have I
righteousness and strength."

And the old monk raised the psalm, "_Quare fremunt gentes_," and his
voice rose and fell through the flowery recesses and dripping grottoes
of the old gorge, sad and earnest like the protest of the few and feeble
of Christ's own against the rushing legions of the world. Yet, as
he sang, courage and holy hope came into his soul from the sacred
words,--just such courage as they afterwards brought to Luther, and to
the Puritans in later times.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE MONK'S DEPARTURE.

The three inhabitants of the little dovecot were sitting in their garden
after supper, enjoying the cool freshness. The place was perfumed with
the smell of orange-blossoms, brought out by gentle showers that had
fallen during the latter part of the afternoon, and all three felt the
tranquillizing effects of the sweet evening air. The monk sat bending
over his drawings, resting the frame on which they lay on the mossy
garden-wall, so as to get the latest advantage of the rich golden
twilight which now twinkled through the sky. Agnes sat by him on the
same wall,--now glancing over his shoulder at his work, and now leaning
thoughtfully on her elbow, gazing pensively down into the deep shadows
of the gorge, or out where the golden light of evening streamed under
the arches of the old Roman bridge, to the wide, bright sea beyond.

Old Elsie bustled about with unusual content in the lines of her keen
wrinkled face. Already her thoughts were running on household furnishing
and bridal finery. She unlocked an old chest which from its heavy quaint
carvings of dark wood must have been some relic of the fortunes of her
better days, and, taking out of a little till of the same a string of
fine silvery pearls, held them up admiringly to the evening light.