ndoned. He saw himself clasping in his
arms the injured idol of his youth; he saw again the strange scene in
the forest, the captured wronger, the rude, lawless trial, and the
stroke of the great sword which avenged dishonor. He saw again his sad,
sweet nuptials; he lived anew through that brief spring and summer and
autumn of belated happiness; he saw again the dead woman and the living
child. He recalled his vow that the girl Heaven had given him should
live apart from the world, sequestered in the holy solitude of the
hills, cloistered in the pine woods. Year by year he seemed to see
again the growth of the girl's life, the patient care, the mutual
love--saw at the last the fairest flower of Sicilian maidenhood,
Perpetua. All these memories belonged to the reign of the good king
Robert, the days when the executioner's sword never swung in the
sunlight over a victim, when it was almost possible for the executioner
to credit the ancient tales that he told to his beautiful child, and to
believe that the Golden Age, indeed, had come again. And now King Robert
the Good was dead and the Golden Age was as far off as those little,
golden clouds above the sea.

The executioner clasped his hands together in a despairing prayer for
Syracuse. For himself he must ply his trade, for that was his duty as it
had been that of his father before him, and his father before him. As
for Perpetua, he would make a home for her still deeper in the heart of
the mountain woods, and still tell her marvellous stories of the Age of
Gold.

He turned away from the prospect of the city and walked slowly towards
his dwelling. Clearer and clearer now came the sound of the advancing
music. He paused for a moment on his threshold.

"I shall be brighter when the King has come and gone," he said. Then he
entered his dwelling and drew the door to after him.

And for a while there was quiet on the summit of the mountain.

III

ROBERT OF SICILY

The bronze archangel, resting on his sword, in the niche hollowed in the
side of the gray Norman church, had never looked before upon so great or
so brave a concourse of people. When the statue had been put in its
place, setting thus the seal upon the pious founder's purpose, King
Robert the Good came simply clad and with little state, as was his
custom, to attend the consecration of the church. Since that day, twenty
years had come and gone, tempering the bronze figure with the changes of
the season