"'Brother Francis, you saw the moon reflected in the well.'

"'My brother,' replied the Saint of God, 'it is not our sister the Moon
I saw in the well, but by the Lord, the true countenance of sister
Clare, and so pure and shining so bright with a holy joy that all my
doubts were instantly dispelled, and it was made plain to me that our
sister enjoys at this present hour the full content God accords his
chosen vessels, loading them with the treasures of Poverty.'

"So saying, the good St. Francis drank a few drops of water in the
hollow of his hand, and arose refreshed.

"And that is why the name of St. Clare was given to this Well."

Such was the tale told by the Reverend Father Adone Doni.

Night after night I returned to find the amiable Cordelier sitting on
the edge of the mystic well. I would seat myself by his side, and he
would tell over for my benefit some fragment of history known only to
himself. He had many delightful stories of the sort to relate, being
better read than any one else in the antiquities of his country. These
lived again and grew bright and young in his head, as if it contained an
intellectual Fountain of Eternal Youth. Ever fresh pictures flowed from
his white-fringed lips. As he spoke, the moonlight bathed his beard in a
silver flood. The crickets accompanied the narrator's voice with the
shrilling of their wing-cases, and ever and anon his words, uttered in
the softest of all dialects of human speech, would be answered by the
fluted plaintive croaking of the frogs, which hearkened from across the
road--a friendly, if apprehensive audience.