ch they were to visit after they had
fortified themselves for it at the village cafe.

They were served by a little hunch-back maid; and she told them who
lived in the chief house of the village. It was uncommonly pretty; where
all the houses were picturesque, and she spoke of it with respect as
the dwelling of a rich magistrate who was clearly the great man of the
place. March admired the cat which rubbed against her skirt while she
stood and talked, and she took his praises modestly for the cat; but
they wrought upon the envy, of her brother so that he ran off to the
garden, and came back with two fat, sleepy-eyed puppies which he held
up, with an arm across each of their stomachs, for the acclaim of the
spectators.

"Oh, give him something!" Mrs. March entreated. "He's such a dear."

"No, no! I am not going to have my little hunchback and her cat
outdone," he refused; and then he was about to yield.

"Hold on!" said Stoller, assuming the host. "I got the change."

He gave the boy a few kreutzers, when Mrs. March had meant her husband
to reward his naivete with half a florin at least; but he seemed to feel
that he had now ingratiated himself with the ladies, and he put himself
in charge of them for the walk to the cemetery chapel; he made Miss
Triscoe let him carry her jacket when she found it warm.

The chapel is dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and the Jesuit brother who
designed it, two or three centuries ago, indulged a devotional fancy
in the triangular form of the structure and the decorative details.
Everything is three-cornered; the whole chapel, to begin with, and then
the ark of the high altar in the middle of it, and each of the three
side-altars. The clumsy baroque taste of the architecture is a German
version of the impulse that was making Italy fantastic at the time; the
carving is coarse, and the color harsh and unsoftened by years, though
it is broken and obliterated in places.

The sacristan said that the chapel was never used for anything but
funeral services, and he led the way out into the cemetery, where he
wished to display the sepultural devices. The graves here were planted
with flowers, and some were in a mourning of black pansies; but a space
fenced apart from the rest held a few neglected mounds, overgrown with
weeds and brambles: This space, he said, was for suicides; but to
March it was not so ghastly as the dapper grief of certain tombs in
consecrated ground where the stones had phot