this figure in the organ-loft
was watching them with his hungry glance, ready the moment that they
looked up to begin his grimaces once more.

"That poor Senator!" thought Buttons; "how did he get there? Oh, how
did he get there?"

Yet how could he be rescued? Could he be? No. He must wait till the
service should be over.

Meanwhile the young men mustered sufficient courage to look up again,
and after a mighty struggle to gaze upon the Senator for a few
seconds at a time at least. There he stood, projecting forward his
anxious face, making faces as each one looked up.

[Illustration: The Senator.]

Now the people in the immediate vicinity of the two young men had
noticed their agitation as has already been stated, and, moreover,
they had looked up to see the cause of it. They too saw the Senator.
Others again, seeing their neighbors looking up, did the same, until
at last all in the transept were staring up at the odd-looking
stranger.

As Buttons and Dick looked up, which they could not help doing often,
the Senator would repeat his mouthings, and nods, and becks, and
looks of entreaty. The consequence was, that the people thought the
stranger was making faces at them. Three hundred and forty-seven
honest people of Sorrento thus found themselves shamefully insulted
in their own church by a barbarous foreigner, probably an Englishman,
no doubt a heretic. The other four hundred and thirty-six who knelt
in the nave knew nothing about it. They could not see the organ-loft
at all. The priests at the high altar could not see it, so that they
were uninterrupted in their duties. The singers in the organ-loft saw
nothing, for the Senator was concealed from their view. Those
therefore who saw him were the people in the transept, who now kept
staring fixedly, and with angry eyes, at the man in the loft.

There was no chance of getting him out of that before the service
was over, and Buttons saw that there might be a serious tumult when
the Senator came down among that wrathful crowd. Every moment made it
worse. Those in the nave saw the agitation of those in the transept,
and got some idea of the cause.

At last the service was ended; the singers departed, the priests
retired, but the congregation remained. Seven hundred and eighty-three
human beings waiting to take vengeance on the miscreant who had
thrown ridicule on the Holy Father by making faces at the faithful
as they knelt in prayer. Already a murmur arose o