Gently the boy loosened his clasp of the Cardinal's hands.

"Then I have found a friend!" he said,--"That is very strange!" He
paused, and the smile that had once before brightened his
countenance shone again like a veritable flash of sunlight--"You
have the right to know my name, and if you choose, to call me by
it,--it is Manuel."

"Manuel!" echoed the Cardinal--"No more than that?"

"No more than that," replied the boy gravely--"I am one of the
world's waifs and strays,--one name suffices me."

There followed a brief pause, in which the old man and the child
looked at each other full and steadfastly, and once again an
inexplicable nervous trembling seized the Cardinal. Overcoming this
with an effort, he said softly,--

"Then--Manuel!--good night! Sleep--and Our Lady's blessing be upon
you!"

Signing the cross in air he retired, carefully shutting the door and
leaving his new-found charge to rest. When he was once by himself in
the next room, however, he made no attempt to sleep,--he merely drew
a chair to the window and sat down, full of thoughts which utterly
absorbed him. There was nothing unusual, surely, in his finding a
small lost boy and giving him a night's lodging?--then why was he so
affected by it? He could not tell. He fully realized that the
plaintive beauty of the child had its share in the powerful