a hoarse whisper.

"You have them with you?"

Dino flashed one look of appeal into the Prior's face, and then sank on
his knees. "Father," he said, desperately, "I have not done as you
commanded me. I could not fight this cause. I could not turn them out of
their inheritance--their home. I destroyed all the papers. There is no
proof left."

In spite of his self-possession the Prior started. Of this contingency
he had certainly never thought. He came a step nearer to the young man,
and spoke with astonished urgency.

"You destroyed the proofs? You? Every one of them?"

"Every one."

A sudden white change passed over Padre Cristoforo's face. His lips
locked themselves together until they looked like a single line; his
eyes flashed ominously beneath his heavy brows. In his anger he did, as
he was privileged to do to any inferior member of his community,
forgetting that Dino Vasari, with his five-and-twenty years, had passed
from under his control, and was free to resent an offered indignity. But
Dino had laid himself open to rebuke by adopting the tone of a penitent.
Thence it came that the Prior lifted his hand and struck him, as he
sometimes struck an offending novice--struck him sharply across the
face. Dino turned scarlet, and then white as death; he sank a little
lower, and crushed his thin fingers more closely together, but he did
not speak. For a moment there was silence. The waiting monks, the
passing pupils who saw the blow given and received, wondered what had
been the offence of one who used to be considered the brightest ornament
of the monastic school, the pride and glory of his teachers. His fault
must be grave, indeed, if it could move the Prior to such wrath.

Padre Cristoforo stood with his hand lifted as if he meant to repeat the
blow; then it fell slowly to his side. He gathered his loose, black robe
round him, as though he would not let his skirts touch the kneeling
figure before him--the scorn of his gesture was unmistakable--and
hastily turned away. As he went, Dino fell on his face on the marble
pavement, crushed by the silence rather than the blow. Monks and pupils,
following the Prior, passed their old companion, and did not dare to
speak a word of greeting.

But Dino would not move. A wave of religious fervour, of passionate
yearning for the old devotional life, had come across him. He might die
on the pavement of the cloister; he would not be sorry even to die and
have done with the man