d, 'He will cast down the mighty from
their seats?'"

"I heard nothing," Perpetua answered, wondering; then in the darkness
the thought of their threatened doom came upon her anew like a black and
icy shadow.

"Is there no cure for the plague?" she asked, faintly, her face strained
towards his. She almost hated herself for asking; better to die of the
plague than to live at the pleasure of Hildebrand. But she was young,
and life had been bright. To her astonishment her companion answered
her question with a laugh that twisted his thin cheeks fantastically:

"You need not fear the plague, child," he said; and as he spoke his
voice sounded kinder than she had ever heard it. "My cloak was my own
clean mantle, and came from no dead sailor's carcass. I played on their
terrors as I played on the lute-strings. I knew that a whisper of the
plague would palsy their hearts, and I conquered them with a lying
tale." He added, in a graver tone: "For the which falsehood I have but
now prayed Heaven to forgive me. I hope my one good deed may be pardoned
to one in whom there is so much to pardon."

Perpetua was amazed at the change that had come over the fool. He seemed
saner, gentler, and, as she looked at him now in the moonlight, his
features did not show so wholly repulsive as she had first esteemed
them. Robert read the amazement in her eyes.

"Child," he said, "do you truly trust me now?"

She extended her hands to him frankly, her heart swelling with
gratitude, big with the two-fold joy of escape from the house of
Lycabetta and release from the terror of the plague.

"I do," she answered, "with all my heart."

Robert caught at her outstretched hands, and, dropping on his knees in
the causeway, kissed them reverentially. Then he rose and faced her, and
as he did so it seemed to the maiden that his body was really less
distorted than it appeared on a first view.

"Perpetua," he said, and he named her name very tenderly. "Perpetua, I
am going to take you to a place of safety. Such women as Lycabetta, such
men as Hildebrand, are ever to be feared; we have fooled them for the
hour, but they may learn that they have been befooled, and the knowledge
will make them revengeful. There is an ancient church in Syracuse, by
the sea, whose crypt communicates with the catacombs that burrow into
the rock. Hieronymus is its priest, famous as a good and holy man. He
will shelter you, protect you; if there be danger you can hide in the