Now here was a deal of pother about a capuchin who had stared at the
Madonnino of Anguissola! The matter was out of all proportion to the stir
it made, and I conveyed in my next words some notion of that opinion.

But she stared wistfully. "Never think it, Agostino," she besought me.
"You know not what it may import." And then she turned to Fra Gervasio.
"Who was this mendicant?" she asked.

He had by now recovered from his erstwhile confusion. But he was still
pale, and I observed that his hand trembled.

"He must have been one of the two little brothers of St. Francis on their
way, they said, from Milan to Loreto on a pilgrimage."

"Not those you told me are resting here until to­morrow?"

From his face I saw that he would have denied it had it lain within his
power to utter a deliberate falsehood.

"They are the same," he answered in a low voice.

She rose. "I must see this friar," she announced, and never in all my life
had I beheld in her such a display of emotion.

"In the morning, then," said Fra Gervasio. "It is after sunset," he
explained. "They have retired, and their rule..." He left the sentence
unfinished, but he had said enough to be understood by her.

She sank back to her chair, folded her hands in her lap and fell into