even the splashes of sunlight
falling from the high-placed windows upon the whitewashed wall could
help to gladden, I stood a little sullenly what time she first upbraided
me and then wept bitterly, sitting in her high-backed chair at the
table's head.

At last Gervasio came, anxious and flurried, for already he had heard
some rumour of what had chanced. His keen eyes went from me to my mother
and then back again to me.

"What has happened?" he asked.

"What has not happened?" wailed my mother. "Agostino is possessed."

He knit his brows. "Possessed?" quoth he.

"Ay, possessed--possessed of devils. He has been violent. He has broken
poor Rinolfo's leg."

"Ah!" said Gervasio, and turned to me frowning with full tutorial
sternness. "And what have you to say, Agostino?"

"Why, that I am sorry," answered I, rebellious once more. "I had hoped
to break his dirty neck."

"You hear him!" cried my mother. "It is the end of the world, Gervasio.
The boy is possessed, I say."

"What was the cause of your quarrel?" quoth the friar, his manner still
more stern.

"Quarrel?" quoth I, throwing back my head and snorting audibly. "I do
not quarrel with Rinolfos. I chastise them when they are insolent or
displease me. This one did both."

He halted before me, erect and very stern--indeed almost threatening.
And I began to grow afraid; for, after all, I had a kindness for
Gervasio, and I would not willingly engage in a quarrel with him. Yet
here I was determined to carry through this thing as I had begun it.

It was my mother who saved the situation.

"Alas!" she moaned, "there is wicked blood in him. He has the abominable
pride that was the ruin and downfall of his father."

Now that was not the way to make an ally of Fra Gervasio. It did the
very opposite. It set him instantly on my side, in antagonism to
the abuser of my father's memory, a memory which he, poor man, still
secretly revered.

The sternness fell away from him. He looked at her and sighed. Then,
with bowed head, and hands clasped behind him, he moved away from me a
little.

"Do not let us judge rashly," he said. "Perhaps Agostino received some
provocation. Let us hear..."

"O, you shall hear," she promised tearfully, exultant to prove him
wrong. "You shall hear a yet worse abomination that was the cause of
it."

And out she poured the story that Rinolfo and his father had run to
tell her--of how I had shown the fellow violence in the first instance