there at the sound a
lattice opened, and some bereaved one cried down to the monk to stop.

Then staggering down the staircase, lighted (it may be) by some haggard
crone with a guttering candle, or only stumbling blindly in the dark
with their load, the bearers would come. In a very few cases these were
two men, more frequently a man and a woman, and most frequently of all
two women.

"_Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!_"

"Brother, we cannot!" a shrill voice came from high above; "come up
hither and help us, for God's sake and the Holy Virgin's! She is our
mother, and we are two young maids, children without strength."

Rollo looked up and saw the child that called down to him. Another at
her shoulder held a lighted candle with a trembling hand.

"She is so little and light, brother," she pleaded, "and went so
regularly to confession. Brother Jeronimo gave her the sacrament but an
hour before she parted from us. Come up and help us, for dear Mary's
sake!"

It went to Rollo's heart to refuse, but he could not well leave his
oxen. He was a stranger to them and they to him; and his work, though
well begun, was yet to finish.

While he stood in doubt, his mind swaying this way and that, a figure
darted across to him from the opposite side of the street, a boy dressed
in a suit of the royal liveries, but with a cloak thrown about his
shoulders and a sailor's red cap upon his head.

"Give me the stick," he said in a muffled voice; "go up and bring down
the woman. If need be, I will help you."

Without pausing to consider the meaning of this curious circumstance,
where all circumstances were curious, Rollo darted up the staircase, his
military boots clattering on the stone steps, strangely out of harmony
with his priestly vocation.

He found the little maiden with the candle waiting at the door for him.
She appeared to be about eight years old, but struck him as very
small-bodied for her age. Her sister had remained within. She was
older--perhaps ten or twelve. She it was who had pleaded the cause of
the dead.

"Indeed, good brother," she began, "we did our best. We tried to carry
her, and moved her as far as the chair. Then, being weak, we could get
no farther. But do you help, and it will be easy!"

Rollo, growing accustomed to death and its sad victims, lifted the
shrouded burden over his shoulder without a shudder. He was in the mood
to take things as they came. The two little girls sank on their kn