were always ajar for conversation. The remarks issuing from them
were richly tinged by the gutturals of the Bergamasque dialect, and
it needed but a slight acquaintance with Italian types to detect
the mountain peasant under the priest's rusty cassock. This in-
ference was confirmed by Don Egidio's telling me that he came from
a village of Val Camonica, the radiant valley which extends north-
ward from the lake of Iseo to the Adamello glaciers. His step-
father had been a labourer on one of the fruit-farms of a Milanese
count who owned large estates in the Val Camonica; and that gentle-
man, taking a fancy to the lad, whom he had seen at work in his
orchards, had removed him to his villa on the lake of Iseo and had
subsequently educated him for the Church.

It was doubtless to this picturesque accident that Don Egidio
owed the mingling of ease and simplicity that gave an inimitable
charm to his stout shabby presence. It was as though some wild
mountain-fruit had been transplanted to the Count's orchards and
had mellowed under cultivation without losing its sylvan flavour.
I have never seen the social art carried farther without suggestion
of artifice. The fact that Don Egidio's amenities were mainly
exercised on the mill-hands composing his parish proved the gen-
uiness of his gift. It is easier to simulate gentility among gen-
tlemen than among navvies; and the plain man is a touchstone who
draws out all the alloy in the gold.

Among his parishioners Don Egidio ruled with the cheerful despotism
of the good priest. His influence was acknowledged not only by
his flock, but by the policeman at the corner, the "bar-keep" in the
dive, the ward politician in the corner grocery. The general ver-

7.

every Catholic priest wears beneath his cassock. I had too much
respect for my friend to wish to penetrate his armour and now and
then I almost fancied he was grateful to me for not putting his
reticence to a new test.

It was as though the long-continued cold had cracked and shrivelled
him. He had grown bent and hollow-chested and his lower lip shock
like an unhinged door. The summer heat did little to revive him,
and in September, when I came home from my vacation, I found him
just recovering from an attack of pneumonia. That autumn he did
not care to venture often into the night air, and now and then I
used to go and sit with him in his little room, to which I had con-
tributed the extraneous luxuries of an easy-chair and a gas-stove.

My engagements, however, made these visits infrequent, and sev-
eral weeks had elapsed without my seeing the parocco when, one snowy
November day, I ran across him in the railway-station. I was on
my way to New York for the day and had just time to wave a greeting to him as I
jumped into the railway-carriage; but a moment later, to my sur-
prise, I saw him stiffly clambering into the train. I found him
seated in the common car, with his umbrella between his knees and
a bundle done up in a red cotton handkerchief on the seat at his
side. The caution with which he transferred this bundle to his
arms to make room for me caused me to glance at it in surprise; and
he answered my look by saying with a smile:

10.

ing for my greater agility and for the fact that I had a cab at my call, I was likely to reach the cemetery in time to see him under shelter before the tentative gusts of sleet that were already sweeping across the river had thickened into a snow-storm.

At the gates of the cemetery I began to take a less sanguine view of my attempt to go into the adventure. The commemorative anniversary had filled the silent avenues with visitors, and I felt the futility of my quest as I tried to fix the gate-keeper's attention on my delineation of a stout Italian priest with a bad cough and a bunch of flowers tied up in a red cotton handkerchief. The gate-keeper had that delusive desire to oblige that is certain to send its victims on the wrong direction; but I had the presence of mind to go exactly contrary to his indication, thanks to this precaution I came, after half an hour's search, on the figure of my poor parocco, kneeling on the wet ground in one of the humblest by-ways of the great necropolis. The mound before which he knelt was strewn with the spoils of Mr. Meriton's conservatories, and on the weather-worn tablet at its head I read the inscription:

Il Conte Siviano

Flumina Bablonis

di Milano.

Super Clunia Bablonis, illic sedimus et flevimus.

So engrossed was Don Egidio that for some moments I stood behind him unobserved; and when he rose and faced me grief had left so little room for any minor emotion that he looked at me almost without surprise.

"Don Egidio," I said, "I have a carriage waiting for you at the gate. You must come home with me."

11.

He nodded quietly and I drew his hand through my arm.

He turned back to the grave. "One moment, my son," he said. "It
may be for the last time." He stood motionless, his eyes were
already bruised and blackened by the cold. "To leave him alone
after sixty years! But God is everywhere," he murmured as I led him
away.

On the journey home he did not care to talk, and my chief con-
cern was to keep him wrapped in my great-coat and to see that his
bed was made ready as soon as I had restored him to his lodgings.
The <u>levatrice</u> brought a quilted coverlet from her own <u>bed</u> and hover-
ed over him as gently as though he had been of the sex to require
her services; while Agostino, at my summons, appeared with a bowl
of hot soup that was heralded down the street by a reviving waft of
garlic. To these ministrations I left the <u>parocco</u>, intending to
call for news of him the next evening; but an unexpected pressure
of work kept me late at my desk, and the following day some fresh
obstacle delayed me.

On the third afternoon, as I was leaving the office, an agate-eyed
infant from the Point hailed me with a message from the doctor.
The <u>parocco</u> was worse and had asked for me. I jumped into the
nearest car and ten minutes later was running up the doctor's
greasy stairs

To my dismay I found Don Egidio's room cold and untenanted; but I
was reassured a moment later by the appearance of the <u>levatrice</u>,
who announced that she had transferèd the blessed man to her own
abstinence, where he could have the sunlight and a good bed to lie in.
There in fact he lay, weak but smiling, in a setting that contrasted