a high cabinet and thence to a
rafter where he perched whimpering in fear of punishment.

"Come down, you rogue," I cried, "come down and retrieve your game."

The creature understood and climbing into the hay loft, which joined
the studio, returned, hugging to his breast the lost casket.

Dovizio, nearly fainting with excitement, counted his treasures, and
compared them with the list. All were there, excepting the Apollo
intaglio, which Ciacco, driven by hunger, had that evening restored to
Raphael.

As it came so pat with the matter of his reading, it is no wonder that
he imagined it had fallen from the skies, and this view of the case even
the placated Dovizio took upon reflection.

"It were a pity to rob him of his illusions if they are an inspiration
to him," he mused. "Let him think himself favoured by Apollo; and as for
my niece, since our business here is now accomplished and we shall leave
Siena on the morrow, he will probably never see her again, and it is as
well that he should not connect her with his visions."

Thus ended our adventures at the villa of Cetinale for Raphael also
presently left us for Urbino and Florence and all things seemed as they
had been before our meeting together. But I knew that the day would
surely come when he would claim his beloved, and that in the spinning of
their fates so slight a thing as the pranking of a fool had twisted
itself into the very fibre of their lives, never to be unravelled until
the shears of Atropos should cut the cords asunder.

III

APOLLO FULFILS HIS PROMISE

_Federigo de Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, gives his views of Raphael_

Then why too will he try so many things,
Instead of sticking to one single art;
He must be studying music, twanging strings,
And writing sonnets with their "heart and dart,"
Lately he's setting up for architect,
And planning palaces, and, as I learn,
Has made a statue--every art in turn.

W. W. STORY.

Raphael, as I have said, betook himself to Florence, that centre of the
arts, and for a matter of four years I saw him not, nor can I, my
Giulio, give you any record of his Florentine experiences, vital as they
were to the flowering of his character and genius. I saw only the
change; he left me a youth, naive, ignorant, but filled with a divine
enthusiasm, inspired as it were by the very spirit of God. In those
four years he became instructed, absorbing all that was best from
ancient and mo