beyed less nervously than before.

Romola on her side was not unobservant; and when the second supply of
milk had been drunk, she looked down at the round-headed man, and said
with mild decision--

"And now tell me, father, how this pestilence came, and why you let your
people die without the sacraments; and lie unburied. For I am come over
the sea to help those who are left alive--and you, too, will help them
now."

He told her the story of the pestilence: and while he was telling it,
the youth, who had fled before, had come peeping and advancing
gradually, till at last he stood and watched the scene from behind a
neighbouring bush.

Three families of Jews, twenty souls in all, had been put ashore many
weeks ago, some of them already ill of the pestilence. The villagers,
said the priest, had of course refused to give shelter to the
miscreants, otherwise than in a distant hovel, and under heaps of straw.
But when the strangers had died of the plague, and some of the people
had thrown the bodies into the sea, the sea had brought them back again
in a great storm, and everybody was smitten with terror. A grave was
dug, and the bodies were buried; but then the pestilence attacked the
Christians, and the greater number of the villagers went away over the
mountain, driving away their few cattle, and carrying provisions. The
priest had not fled; he had stayed and prayed for the people, and he had
prevailed on the youth Jacopo to stay with him; but he confessed that a
mortal terror of the plague had taken hold of him, and he had not dared
to go down into the valley.

"You will fear no longer, father," said Romola, in a tone of encouraging
authority; "you will come down with me, and we will see who is living,
and we will look for the dead to bury them. I have walked about for
months where the pestilence was, and see, I am strong. Jacopo will come
with us," she added, motioning to the peeping lad, who came slowly from
behind his defensive bush, as if invisible threads were dragging him.

"Come, Jacopo," said Romola again, smiling at him, "you will carry the
child for me. See! your arms are strong, and I am tired."

That was a dreadful proposal to Jacopo, and to the priest also; but they
were both under a peculiar influence forcing them to obey. The
suspicion that Romola was a supernatural form was dissipated, but their
minds were filled instead with the more effective sense that she was a
human being whom God had