entered on his duty with a firm resolution to do justice.

"Thou 'art well known here, pilgrim," observed the officer, with some
severity of tone, to the next that came to the gate.

"St. Francis to speed, master, it were else wonderful! I should be so, for
the seasons scarce come and go more regularly."

"There must be a sore conscience somewhere, that Rome and thou should need
each other so often?"

The pilgrim, who was enveloped in a tattered coat, sprinkled with
cockle-shells, who wore his beard, and was altogether a disgusting picture
of human depravity, rendered still more revolting by an ill-concealed
hypocrisy, laughed openly and recklessly at the remark.

"Thou art a follower of Calvin, master," he replied, "or thou would'st not
have said this. My own failings give me little trouble. I am engaged by
certain parishes of Germany to take upon my poor person their physical
pains, and it is not easy to name another that hath done as many messages
of this kind as myself, with better proofs of fidelity. If thou hast any
little offering to make, thou shalt see fair papers to prove what I
say;--papers that would pass at St. Peter's itself!"

The officer perceived that he had to do with one of those unequivocal
hypocrites--if such a word can properly be applied to him who scarcely
thought deception necessary--who then made a traffic of expiations of this
nature; a pursuit that was common enough at the close of the seventeenth
and in the commencement of the eighteenth centuries, and which has not
even yet entirely disappeared from Europe. He threw the pass with