added a second.

"In a hut which he built for himself with his own hands," a third
explained.

"And he lives on nuts and herbs and such scraps of food as are left
him by the charitable," put in the fourth, to show himself as full of
knowledge as his fellows.

But now it was Giovannozza who took up the story, firmly and resolutely;
and being a woman she easily kept her tongue going and overbore the
peasants so that they had no further share in the tale until it was
entirely told. From her I learnt that the anchorite, one Fra Sebastiano,
possessed a miraculous image of the blessed martyr St. Sebastian, whose
wounds miraculously bled during Passion Week, and that there were no
ills in the world that this blood would not cure, provided that those to
whom it was applied were clean of mortal sin and imbued with the spirit
of grace and faith.

No pious wayfarer going over the Pass of Cisa into Tuscany but would
turn aside to kiss the image and ask a blessing at the hands of the
anchorite; and yearly in the season of the miraculous manifestation,
great pilgrimages were made to the hermitage by folk from the Valleys of
the Taro and Bagnanza, and even from beyond the Apennines. So that Fra
Sebastiano gathered great store of alms, part of which he redistributed
amongst the poor, part of which he was saving to build a bridge over
the Bagnanza torrent, in crossing which so many poor folk had lost their
lives.

I listened intently to the tale of wonders that followed, and now the
peasants joined in again, each with a story of some marvellous cure of
which he had direct knowledge. And many and amazing were the details
they gave me of the saint--for they spoke of him as a saint already--so
that no doubt lingered in my mind of the holiness of this anchorite.

Giovannozza related how a goatherd coming one night over the pass had
heard from the neighbourhood of the hut the sounds of singing, and the
music was the strangest and sweetest ever sounded on earth, so that it
threw the poor fellow into a strange ecstasy, and it was beyond doubt
that what he had heard was an angel choir. And then one of the peasants,
the tallest and blackest of the four, swore with a great oath that one
night when he himself had been in the hills he had seen the hermit's hut
all aglow with heavenly light against the black mass of the mountain.

All this left me presently very thoughtful, filled with wonder and
amazement. Then their talk shifted again, an