stone between the hermitage and the well, but he distributed among the
donors alms far more profitable than their gifts. He entered no
village, borne upon an ass laden with twin sacks, for the purpose of
sanctimoniously robbing the inhabitants; no profane songs were ever
heard resounding from his dwelling by the peasant incautiously lingering
at a late hour too near its vicinity; my guide, the monk, complained
bitterly of his unsociability, and no scandalous legend of nymph-like
comforters and damsel visitants haunting the sacred dwelling escaped
from the garrulous friar's well-loaded budget.

"Does he study much?" said I, with the interest of a student.

"I fear me not," quoth the monk. "I have had occasion often to enter
his abode, and I have examined all things with a close eye,--for,
praised be the Lord, I have faculties more than ordinarily clear and
observant,--but I have seen no books therein, excepting a missal, and a
Latin or Greek Testament, I know not well which; nay, so incurious or
unlearned is the holy man that he rejected even a loan of the 'Life of
Saint Francis,' notwithstanding it has many and rare pictures, to say
nothing of its most interesting and amazing tales."

More might the monk have said, had we not now suddenly entered a thick
and sombre wood. A path cut through it was narrow, and only capable of
admitting a traveller on foot or horseback; and the boughs overhead were
so darkly interlaced that the light scarcely, and only in broken and
erratic glimmerings, pierced the canopy.

"It is the wood," said the monk, crossing himself, "wherein the
wonderful adventure happened to Saint Francis, which I will one day
narrate at length to you."