r ever seeing it, but, as he had
written her hundreds of notes before, pouring out his heart into them
because it was too full to bear without that relief. He took the note
out, but how should he give it to her? The window was too far above
for him to toss so light a thing unless it should be weighted with a
stone; and he could not throw a stone at Silvia's window. He held it
up, and, that she might see it more clearly, tore up a handful of red
poppies and laid it white on the blossoms that were a deep red by
night.

Silvia understood, and after a moment's study dropped him down the
ball of her knitting; and soon the note came swaying up through the
still air resting on its cushion of poppies, for Claudio had wound the
thread about both flowers and letter.

He smiled with an almost incredulous delight as he saw the package
arrive safely at its destination, and caught afterward the faint red
light of the lamp that Silvia had taken down from before her Madonna
to read the note by. Since she was a little thing only five or six
years old his heart had turned toward her, and her small white face
had been to him the one star in a dim life. He still kept two or three
tiny flowers she had given him years before when his family and hers
were coming together down from Monte San Silvestro at the other side
of Monte Compatri. The two children, with others, had stopped to stick
fresh flowers through the wire screen before the great crucifix
half-way up the mountain, and Silvia had given Claudio these blossoms.
He had laid them away with his treasures and relics--the bit of muslin
from the veil of Our Lady of Loretto, the almost invisible speck from
the cord of St. Francis of Assisi and the little paper of the ashes of
Blessed Joseph Labre. In those days he was the little priest and she
the little nun, and their companions stood respectfully back for them.
Now he was no more the priest, and she was up there in her window
against the sky reading the note he had written her.

This is what the note said:

"My heart is breaking for your sorrow. Why should such eyes
as yours be permitted to weep? Who is there to wipe those
tears away? Oh that I might catch them as they fall! Drop me
down a handkerchief that has been wet with them, that I may
keep it as a relic. Tell me of some way in which I can
console you and spend my life to serve you."

She read with a mingling of consolation and astonishment. Why, this