r all the gossiping.

The boy wanted no king or prince.

He said so to them with erect disdain.

Yet he was proud.

"After all, one does hear the bells ringing," he thought; his mind
drifting away to the old Carmignano beggar's words. He was proud, and
glad.

He stopped his mule by Strozzi palace, and pushed his way into the
almost empty market to the place called the Spit or Fila, where all day
long and every day before the roaring fires the public cooks roast flesh
and fowl to fill the public paunch of Florence.

Here there was a large crowd, pushing to buy the frothing, savoury hot
meats. He thrust the others aside, and bought half a kid smoking, and a
fine capon, and thrust them in his cart. Then he went to a shop near,
and bought some delicate white bread, and some foreign chocolate, and
some snowy sugar.

"No doubt," he thought, "the boy had learned to like daintier fare than
theirs in his new life;" theirs, which was black crusts and oil and
garlic all the year round, with meat and beans, perhaps, on feast
nights, now and then, by way of a change. Then as he was going to get
into his seat he saw among the other plants and flowers standing for
sale upon the ledge outside the palace a damask rose-tree--a little
thing, but covered with buds and blossoms blushing crimson against the
stately old iron torch-rings of the smith Caprera. Bruno looked at
it--he who never thought of flowers from one year's end on to another,
and cut them down with his scythe for his oxen to munch as he cut grass.
Then he bought it.

The boy liked all beautiful innocent things, and had been always so
foolish about the lowliest herb. It would make the dark old house upon
the hill look bright to him. Ashamed of the weaknesses that he yielded
to, Bruno sent the mule on at its fastest pace; the little red rose-tree
nodding in the cart.

He had spent more in a day than he was accustomed to spend in three
months' time.

But then the house looked so cheerless.

As swiftly as he could make the mule fly, he drove home across the
plain.

The boy was there, no doubt; and would be cold and hungry, and alone.

Bruno did not pause a moment on his way, though more than one called to
him as he drove, to know if it were true indeed that this night there
was to be a gala for the Lamia and the princes.

He nodded, and flew through the chill grey afternoon, splashing the deep
mud on either side of him.

The figure of St. Giusto on his high