if I will tear
away and overcome this love, I shall gain so much merit that my prayers
will have power to save his soul. Promise me, dear mother, that you and
all the sisters will help me with your prayers;--help me to work out
this great salvation, and then I shall be so glad to come back here and
spend all my life in prayer!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE MOUNTAIN FORTRESS.

And so on a bright spring morning our pilgrims started. Whoever has
traversed the road from Sorrento to Naples, that wonderful path along
the high, rocky shores of the Mediterranean, must remember it only as a
wild dream of enchantment. On one side lies the sea, shimmering in bands
of blue, purple, and green to the swaying of gentle winds, exhibiting
those magical shiftings and changes of color peculiar to these waves.
Near the land its waters are of pale, transparent emerald, while farther
out they deepen into blue and thence into a violet-purple, which again,
towards the horizon-line, fades into misty pearl-color. The shores rise
above the sea in wild, bold precipices, grottoed into fantastic caverns
by the action of the waves, and presenting every moment some new variety
of outline. As the path of the traveller winds round promontories whose
mountain-heights are capped by white villages and silvery with
olive-groves, he catches the enchanting sea-view, now at this point, and
now at another, with Naples glimmering through the mists in the
distance, and the purple sides of Vesuvius ever changing with streaks
and veins of cloud-shadows, while silver vapors crown the summit. Above
the road the steep hills seem piled up to the sky,--every spot
terraced, and cultivated with some form of vegetable wealth, and the
wild, untamable rocks garlanded over with golden broom, crimson
gillyflowers, and a thousand other bright adornments. The road lies
through villages whose gardens and orange-orchards fill the air with,
sweet scents, and whose rose-hedges sometimes pour a perfect cascade of
bloom and fragrance over the walls.

Our travellers started in the dewy freshness of one of those gorgeous
days which seem to cast an illuminating charm over everything. Even old
Elsie's stern features relaxed somewhat under the balmy influences of
sun and sky, and Agnes's young, pale face was lit up with a brighter
color than for many a day before. Their pilgrimage through this
beautiful country had few incidents. They walked in the earlier and
latter parts of the day, rep