the lad's mind that he was in touch
with another world, and was a being set apart.

"Lord, teach me the way my soul should walk!" was his prayer. Doubt and
distrust filled his mind, and his nights were filled with fear. This
child without sin believed himself to be a sinner.

But this feeling was all forgotten when another companion came to join
them in their walks. This was a girl about the same age as Girolamo. She
was the child of a neighbor--one of the Strozzi family. The Strozzi
belonged to the nobility, and the Savonarolas were only peasants, yet
with children there is no caste. So this trinity of boy, girl and
grandfather was very happy. The old man taught his pupils to observe the
birds and bees, to make tracings of the flowers, and to listen to the
notes he played on the pipes, so as to call them all by name. And then
there was always the Saint Thomas Aquinas to fall back upon should
outward nature fail.

But there came a day when the boy and the girl ceased to walk hand in
hand, and instead of the delight and abandon of childhood there was
hesitation and aloofness.

When the parents of the girl forbade her playing with the boy, reminding
her of the difference in their station, and she came by stealth to bid
the old man and her playmate Girolamo good-by, the pride in the boy's
heart flamed up: he clenched his fist--and feeling spent itself in
tears.

When he looked up the girl was gone--they were never to meet again.

The grief of the boy pierced the heart of the old man, and he murmured,
"Joy liveth yet for a day, but the sorrow of man abideth forever."

Doubt and fear assailed the lad.

The efforts of his grandfather to interest him in the study of his own
profession of medicine failed. Religious brooding filled his days, and
he became pale and weak from fasting.

He had grown in stature, but the gauntness of his face made his coarse
features stand out so, that he was almost repulsive. But this homeliness
was relieved by the big, lustrous, brown eyes--eyes that challenged and
beseeched in turn.

The youth was now a young man--eighteen summers lay behind--when he
disappeared from home.

Soon came a letter from Bologna in which Girolamo explained at length to
his mother that the world's wickedness was to him intolerable, its
ambition ashes, and its hopes not worth striving for. He had entered the
monastery of Saint Dominico, and to save his family the pain of parting
he had stolen quietly away. "I