gulf in my memory, a gap I could not
bridge. But uppermost leapt the anxieties concerning the image of St.
Sebastian.

I struggled up to discover that I was very weak; so weak that I was glad
to sink back again.

"Does it bleed? Does it bleed yet?" I asked, and my voice was so small
and feeble that the sound of it startled me.

The old priest shook his head, and his eyes were very full of
compassion.

"Poor youth, poor youth!" he sighed.

Without all was silent; there was no such rustle of a multitude as I
listened for. And then I observed in my cell a little shepherd-lad who
had been wont to come that way for my blessing upon occasions. He was
half naked, as lithe as a snake and almost as brown. What did he there?
And then someone else stirred--an elderly peasant-woman with a wrinkled
kindly face and soft dark eyes, whom I did not know at all.

Somehow, as my mind grew clearer, last night seemed ages remote. I
looked at the priest again.

"Father," I murmured, "what has happened?"

His answer amazed me. He started violently. Looked more closely, and
suddenly cried out:

"He knows me! He knows me! Deo gratias!" And he fell upon his knees

Now here it seemed to me was a sort of madness. "Why should I not know
you?" quoth I.

The old woman peered at me. "Ay, blessed be Heaven! He is awake at
last, and himself again." She turned to the lad, who was staring at me,
grinning. "Go tell them, Beppo! Haste!"

"Tell them?" I cried. "The pilgrims? Ah, no, no--not unless the miracle
has come to pass!"

"There are no pilgrims here, my son," said the priest.

"Not?" I cried, and cold horror descended upon me. "But they should have
come. This is Holy Friday, father."

"Nay, my son, Holy Friday was a fortnight ago."

I stared askance at him, in utter silence. Then I smiled half
tolerantly. "But father, yesterday they were all here. Yesterday was..."

"Your yesterday, my son, is sped these fifteen days," he answered. "All
that long while, since the night you wrestled with the Devil, you have
lain exhausted by that awful combat, lying there betwixt life and death.
All that time we have watched by you, Leocadia here and I and the lad
Beppo."

Now here was news that left me speechless for some little while. My
amazement and slow understanding were spurred on by a sight of my hands
lying on the rude coverlet which had been flung over me. Emaciated they
had been for some months now. But at present they were as white a