; then you will see one another by lamplight. It is
just a year ago, this hour, since I ran away; can it be only a year?
Ah, Manna, you cannot imagine how many hundred years I have lived
through in this one. I am as old as the hills, as old as that laughing
Sprite the groom told me about."

He repeated the story to his two willing listeners. When he had ended,
Eric announced his intention of staying till the next day with his
mother, for every one who was not a blood relation was a stranger at
such a time as this. Roland would hear nothing of his being a stranger,
but Manna's eyes as they gleamed in the darkness seemed to grow larger.

At the new gateway the party divided, Roland and his sister going to
the villa, and Eric returning to the green cottage with his mother and
aunt. For the second time he had seen Manna, and for the second time
she had seemed nothing but eyes.

How strange that this man should look like the picture of Saint
Anthony, thought Manna, when she was alone in her room; there seemed to
me no point of resemblance between them; some passing look of his, an
expression of his eyes, must have reminded Roland of the picture; she
too had seen nothing of Eric but his tall figure and his eyes.

She knelt long in prayer, and as she took off her clothes afterwards,
she drew more tightly round her waist a girdle--only a little cord it
was, which one of the nuns had given her--so tightly that it cut into
her flesh.

CHAPTER XIV.

A MORNING GIFT.

Before daylight Roland was at Eric's bedside, and waked him, saying:--

"I will go with you to-day."

Eric could not think what the boy meant, till he reminded him of his
having said that he ought, at least once every year, to go up on some
hill and see the sun rise. Eric remembered saying so, and, hastily
putting on his clothes, they walked together up a neighboring eminence.
A year ago that morning, Roland said he had for the first time seen the
sun rise; then he was alone, now with a friend.

"Let us keep silent," advised Eric. They looked towards the east, and
saw the light gradually appear. A new light dawned in Roland's mind; he
saw that all the splendor and glory of the world is nothing, compared
with the light which belongs alike to all. The richest can make for
himself nothing higher than the sunlight, which shines for the poorest
in his hovel; the fairest and the highest belongs to a