r the plains and even partly up the mountain side.
An odour, oppressive and sickening, accompanied this mist, which
embarrassed the respiration, and made the senses dull and weary; and yet
there sat Gerald, drinking in these noxious influences, careless of his
fate, and half triumphing in his own indifference as to life. A drowsy
stupor was rapidly gaining on him, when he felt his arm violently
shaken, and, looking up, saw Gabriel at his side. In a gruff, rude
voice, he chided him for his imprudence, and told him to go in.

'Isn't my life, at least, my own?' said Gerald boldly.

'That it is not,' said the other. 'Your priestly teachers might have
told you that you hold it in trust for Him who gave it. I, and men like
me, would say that each of us here has his allotted task to do in life;
and that he is but a coward, or as bad as a coward, who skulks his share
of it. Go in, I say, boy.'

Gerald obeyed without a word; and now a slavish sense of fear came over
him, and he felt that this man swayed and controlled him as he pleased.

'There, Gerald, drink that,' said Gabriel, filling him out a goblet of
red wine. 'That's the liquor inspires the pious sentiments of the
Bishop of Orvieto. From that generous grape-juice spring his Christian
charities and his heavenly precepts. Let us see what miracles it can
work upon two such sinful mortals as you and me. Well done, boy; drain
off another,' and he refilled his glass as he spoke.

Old Pippo had retired and left them alone together. The moon was slowly
rising beyond the lake, and threw a long yellow stream upon the floor,
the only light in the chamber where they sat, thus giving a sort of
solemnity to a moment when each felt too deeply sunk in his own thoughts
for much conversation.

'Do you remark how that streak of moonlight seems to separate us,
Gerald?' said Gabriel. 'A superstitious mind would find food for
speculation there, and trace some mysterious meaning--perhaps a
warning--from it. Are you superstitious?'

'I can scarcely say I am not,' said the boy diffidently.

'None of us are,' said the other boldly. 'If we affect to despise
spirits we are just as eager slaves of our own presentiments. What
we dignify by the name of reason is just as often a mere prompting of
instinct. It amuses us to believe that we steer the bark of our destiny;
but the truth comes upon us at last, that the tiller was lashed when the
voyage began.' After a long silence on both sides, Gabr