o cause for this feeling? You do not accuse him of
having neglected the mission intrusted to him?"

"No, father; he has worked bravely and devotedly; he is a true patriot
and has deserved nothing but love and respect from me."

Father Cardi pondered.

"My son, if there is within you a new light, a dream of some great work
to be accomplished for your fellow-men, a hope that shall lighten the
burdens of the weary and oppressed, take heed how you deal with the most
precious blessing of God. All good things are of His giving; and of His
giving is the new birth. If you have found the way of sacrifice, the way
that leads to peace; if you have joined with loving comrades to bring
deliverance to them that weep and mourn in secret; then see to it that
your soul be free from envy and passion and your heart as an altar where
the sacred fire burns eternally. Remember that this is a high and holy
thing, and that the heart which would receive it must be purified from
every selfish thought. This vocation is as the vocation of a priest;
it is not for the love of a woman, nor for the moment of a fleeting
passion; it is FOR GOD AND THE PEOPLE; it is NOW AND FOREVER."

"Ah!" Arthur started and clasped his hands; he had almost burst out
sobbing at the motto. "Father, you give us the sanction of the Church!
Christ is on our side----"

"My son," the priest answered solemnly, "Christ drove the moneychangers
out of the Temple, for His House shall be called a House of Prayer, and
they had made it a den of thieves."

After a long silence, Arthur whispered tremulously:

"And Italy shall be His Temple when they are driven out----"

He stopped; and the soft answer came back:

"'The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith the Lord.'"

CHAPTER V.

THAT afternoon Arthur felt the need of a long walk. He intrusted his
luggage to a fellow-student and went to Leghorn on foot.

The day was damp and cloudy, but not cold; and the low, level country
seemed to him fairer than he had ever known it to look before. He had a
sense of delight in the soft elasticity of the wet grass under his
feet and in the shy, wondering eyes of the wild spring flowers by the
roadside. In a thorn-acacia bush at the edge of a little strip of wood
a bird was building a nest, and flew up as he passed with a startled cry
and a quick fluttering of brown wings.

He tried to keep his mind fixed upon the devout meditations proper to
the eve of Good Friday. But tho