en again--I peep
through the hole--nothing, absolutely nothing that I can see. I am
brave--I am not to be daunted. What do I do next? I open the gate. Ah!
sacred Mother of Heaven, what do I behold lying all along our threshold?
A man--dead!--a big man; bigger than you, bigger than me, bigger than
anybody in this convent--buttoned up tight in a fine coat, with black
eyes, staring, staring up at the sky, and blood soaking through and
through the front of his shirt. What do I do? I scream once--I scream
twice--and run back to the father superior!"

All the particulars of the fatal duel which I had gleaned from the
French newspaper in Monkton's room at Naples recurred vividly to my
memory. The suspicion that I had felt when I looked into the outhouse
became a certainty as I listened to the old monk's last words.

"So far I understand," said I. "The corpse I have just seen in the
outhouse is the corpse of the man whom you found dead outside your gate.
Now tell me why you have not given the remains decent burial."

"Wait--wait--wait," answered the Capuchin. "The father superior hears
me scream and comes out; we all run together to the gate; we lift up the
big man and look at him close. Dead! dead as this (smacking the dresser
with his hand). We look again, and see a bit of paper pinned to the
collar of his coat. Aha! son of mine, you start at that. I thought I
should make you start at last."

I had started, indeed. That paper was doubtless the leaf mentioned
in the second's unfinished narrative as having been torn out of his
pocketbook, and inscribed with the statement of how the dead man had
lost his life. If proof positive were wanted to identify the dead body,
here was such proof found.

"What do you think was written on the bit of paper?" continued the
Capuchin "We read and shudder. This dead man has been killed in a
duel--he, the desperate, the miserable, has died in the commission of
mortal sin; and the men who saw the killing of him ask us Capuchins,
holy men, servants of Heaven, children of our lord the Pope--they ask
_us_ to give him burial! Oh! but we are outraged when we read that; we
groan, we wring our hands, we turn away, we tear our beards, we--"

"Wait one moment," said I, seeing that the old man was heating himself
with his narrative, and was likely, unless I stopped him, to talk more
and more fluently to less and less purpose--"wait a moment. Have you
preserved the paper that was pinned to the dead man