father's house above me ere he went away, as the lordships may yet observe for themselves in the inner chamber.Not that it is a fit place for their Nobility's generous eyes to contemplatebeing but the pallet of a widow," Sora Lucia added hurriedly, having her own good reasons for not desiring a closer inspection of the empty abandoned hut. The money will come to you from Venice, in a week or two, in a registered letter. And mind you spend it to buy yourself food and firewood," said the other Englishman, the one who had not yet spoken. Then he made a careful note of her name on the corner of his sketch book, and behold, in a moment, in a flash of big wheels, they were gone-laughing, ruddy of face-sitting upon their bicycles like lions.

So for a time, and because of these things, there was comfort and a season of comparative high living in the big raftered room under the crumbling frescoes of the Cupids. It was not to be expected that Sora Lucia, in her character of experienced woman of the world, should begin by revealing the full measure of her enterprise or of her astounding good fortune. She had stumbled upon good luck; yes, there was no denying it. And upon real Lordships-Lordships from Outside with holes in their blessed hands through which the money ran down like a river upon honest respectable persons such as herself. Dear woman, was it likely that she would be denying it? Also, it was possible, there was no saying, it was a sharp eye that could see the thoughts inside another person's skin but it might be that, later, Sor Tomaso, the postman, would yet have cause to show how great was the esteem excited in the Englishmen's breasts by the sight of unimpeachable probity in affliction. For the rest, it might be that Colline Belle would yet awaken to the knowledge of how Outsiders cherish deserving merit-and reward The Virtuous Woman. Basta cosi.

The soldi crept out of her pocket one after the other, changing into scraps of dried fish, to give the taste to the polenta; and pennyworths of salt; and dabs of very yellow butter; not to

mention certain precious, almost intoxicating fragments of extremely strong cheese. Also on one very wretched afternoon, at the beginning of the winter rains, it was a fact that she made a surreptitious visit in the streaming wet to the village grocery. And on that night, that never-to-be-forgotten night, the raftered room was filled with a heavenly smell of freshly brewed coffee, which in itself alone was a treat-and grand enough to satisfy a Cardinal wearing his scarlet hat, as Fortunata remarked, gloating.

Still it rained. With nothing new to talk over in the long dripping misty afternoons, perhaps it was small cause for wonder that Sora Lucia ended by letting her tongue get the better of her prudence. Now, the stone that you throw, and the word that you speak, are two things that will never come back to your hand for the wishing; and Fortunata the Widow, pondering in the dark hours of the night upon these things that had befallen, with nothing but the drip, drip of the rain and the sound of the dropping bits of plaster to divert her thoughts, felt the swelling sense of injustice embitter all her soul.

It was not only that advantage had been taken of past confidence, and capital made by another out of her own old half-forgotten misfortunes. Such things might possibly be forgiven, since this, at the best, is but a hungry and a puzzling world to live in; where curious deviations from a strict veracity are sometimes imperative for professional purposes. And, of a truth, even she, Fortunata, had likewise partaken of that coffee. Also the cheese. No! the real sting lay deeper. For, "Nay, but concerning yonder matter of moneysthat was but the trick of a barren woman," she began, argumentatively, so soon as the dull gray light of another wet morning crept in through the holes in the window curtain, making the renewal of conversation seem possible.

And Sora Lucia lifted another tangled gray head from the opposite little pillow, stuffed with corn husks. "Behold! it rains," she remarked, yawning ostentatiously. "What is left over of those coffee grounds, when I have given them yet another bubble of fresh

boiling, e-eh! but it will taste hot to begin a day with," she announced soothingly; perhaps not altogether sorry to invoke the sense of gratitude due for that past orgie and so divert attention from less pleasing reflections. "To claim the pains of another woman's child-bearing! to call Giannino my littlest, my youngest, thine; and to speak of him by the name that was never his, before those foreign Lordships, for never, never had a son, Pierino- ! Via. It was but the trick of a childless woman. A halfwife," said Fortunata the Widow, waxin wrath.

And now, at last, it did appear that Providence was disposed to smile benignant upon the innocent and the injured. The Englishmen? but surely; they are within. Stand in, stand in out of the rain, for a little, my sister, while I tell thee. Of a truth, thou

is full of gall thou canst not spit honey. That stands to reason," retorted Lucia, sitting up in bed and beginning to stretch her stiff knees. A cold wind blew up the middle of the room, and the floor felt icy-chill under her rheumatic ankles. Also there was a flat, demoralizing sense of emptiness about the pockets of her old gown, where last week's abundance of coppers had made such a pleasant jingling. So she added with a biting intention of irony "I did not hear thee speak thus while thou wast eating of my good butter to thy polenta. Or was it perhaps that I was deaf? Or was it that thou wast only forgetful of thy precious Giannino while the salt fish lasted? Pazienza! For me it is but to wait until the Englishman, the good Englishman, the excellent Englishman, has sent me the envelope with the blue marks upon it, and the further money!"

(6

Ay, woman. But the loaf belongs in the end to the one who has eaten it. Also, at one time it is the turn of the hare, and at another time behold! it is the turn of the_harrier," quoth the Widow, darkly. For the first time since they had joined housekeeping she was ready to leave the room without breaking bread.

Outside, the rain soaked readily through her Sunday shawl. But the burning, smarting sense of a great injustice suffered-that indignant remembrance of how she had been bribed and tricked into accepting as a gift what was, strictly speaking, her ownalms given in recognition of her personal experiences, though actually be

than like any Christian," said the goodnatured, broad-beamed landlord very condescendingly, after listening to but one or two of her nervous eager questions.

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They stood in, under the shelter of the carriage house, where the strangers' bicycles were already leaning against the wall, and the master of the "Black Eagle" rubbed one fat forefinger up and down the shining wheels with the air of a connoisseur. They are within, and, doubtless they are mad, little sister," he explained complacently, with all the assertive volu. bility of a man and a master who has but lately been turned out of his own kitchen, into the wet, as a hint not to loiter about under the feet of his women folk. They are mad. Storms detain them not. They depart through any deluge-like tigers. Even now they are going, and I grieve for the loss to the house, since they are of those who pay for what they consume and for what they have never thought of consuming. It is true they call for much meat on awakening, at the hour when the king himself is content to peacefully drink his coffee and to eat, what do I know? to eat little pastes. Wherefore they have caused the women of my household to run like emmets about the kitchen fire. Also they have. offered money to Lisa, my maidservant, to stand with her wine-flask, while they drew the shape of her in their little books. They paid for that; yet did not partake of wine. Also they laugh much-always setting down things in the books. And they talk

continually between themselves, in a dialect no man may understand. But what is then this thing that thou wouldst ask of them, eh, little sister?" "It is-it is but a matter of justice, Sor Padrone," Fortunata made shift to answer, and dropped a timid curtsey in the mud. But the hopeful old eyes were afire with excitement under the shadow of the dripping shawl.

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'Nay, keep your own counsel, keep your own counsel, an' you will. A woman's tongue is never safer than when she is biting it. I ask for no man's confidence; not I;-and here they come. They have eaten all that was set before them. They have paid their bill. Behold! they come," he announced moving away, deeply offended. To the little trembling old woman it seemed barely an instant before the two big wheels had flashed past her, rocking on the stones, out into the stable yard. The young men swung to their places. Then, indeed, she did make one feeble abortive effort to accomplish the ends of pure justice-rushing out of shelter while the wind blew the old shawl fringe into her eyes, so that one young man bade her "Mind what she was about there!" with a sharpness which would have been intelligible in all the languages of the Tower of Babel. The other pulled off his hat with a gallant flourish of salutation. "Addioaddio, bony genty!" he shouted out cheerily to an audience composed of the fat landlord, Fortunata, three dogs, and one outraged hen. Then the big wheels disappeared down the hill at the rate of twenty miles an hour, and Fortunata's eloquent, much-considered expostulation-beginning, Oh, gentlemen, I, the real widow, approach you in the name of real charity"-took its place, once and for all, among the unheard of petitions of a deaf and very unjust world. And, "Doubtless, each man knows best what is boiling under the cover of his own pot, little sister. Yet I heard no talk of justice. Also it rains," said the landlord, resentfully. And behind his wounded feelings he banged the kitchen door.

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When Sora Lucia was informed of this unfortunate attempt, "See there "See there now it was not yet the turn of the harrier, then?" she inquired, philo

sophically enough. But Fortunata turned upon her in a moment, like a weak-kneed Fury, "Oh, thou-thou purloiner of other people's children! Thou-thou bed of sand, bringing forth nothing green and living! Peace. I will not have thee speak so much as one littlest word to me. I say-peace !" She choked. "Thou art a person entirely deprived of education," she added deliberately.

Now, this is the intolerable, the supreme insult, of North Italy. After that, knives follow. But these two, being but a pair of little under-fed old women, with nothing much more dangerous in their possession than the iron ladle with which Sora Lucia stirred the polenta, had no resource but to lay the whole tangled recital of their wrongs before the Tribunal of the Womenwhich meets, as every one knows, from dawn to dusk, about the stone tanks just outside the village.

But public opinion, even when it discriminates sufficiently to accept your own view of the case, is but a hollow comfort while you are forced to share the bedroom of your enemy. And public opinion at Colline Belle was as sensitive as a Parisian barricade to variations of the weather. For instance, "Think," Sora Benedetta Bai would begin, lifting a flushed thin cheek from stooping over the cold soapy water, and looking vaguely out, across empty fields, to a blank, snowladen sky; think if one who passed along this road had but offered five good little francs to any one of us! Yet I am a hard-working woman, I. I sit not with my hands in my hands waiting for roasted chickens to knock at my door. And my husband, poor man! if he be not living at ease in mad houses, it is of a certainty not for lack of deserving !"

"Five francs in the hand, with ten more to follow. With ten more to follow. And all the children already beginning to look pinched. With this cold wind blow, blowing, until there is not one wet inch of me but has learned a new sort of shiver, and we not yet fairly into December, the saints forgive us," the cobbler's wife added gloomily, lifting a great armful of dripping cloths out upon the edge of the tank.

"See there, woman! Look to thy handiwork! wouldst thou take the very soapsuds from the water to thyself? Of a surety, it is Sora Lucia who is the fortunate one. And better be born without a nose than be born unlucky." "Ohime," said the prettiest girl of the village little Rosina of the Mill. "But it was my money. The Englishman meant it for me. And she would steal from me even my Giannino," wailed Fortunata the Widow from the dry stone upon which she sat afar. She had no clothes to whiten.

"Ahi. She would steal the child," assented the cobbler's wife in shrill chorus.

Tasete, femine! Who knows what an Englishman would be meaning? My own cousin had a cousin who served them at table, and lo! he was dismissed for laughing at one of their own jests! Basta that the ten francs arrive on a day when Tomaso the postman can tell his right hand from his left. I say it who know it. Of a surety since he was called before the Commission at Treviso his employment hangeth by a thread. And all for losing some bits of cards with the writing only on one side of them. Yet, if the man be sent away, oh my sisters, is not his wife still sick? and his children little ?" demanded Benedetta Bai, wiping her hands upon a soaking apron. And "Mother o' Mercy! more hungry children ?" wailed the cobbler's wife under her difficult breath.

As a matter of fact, Tomaso the postman was very drunk indeed on the evening of that December day which brought the Englishman's letter. So drunk that after having searched all his pockets, one after the other, to find his book of official receipts, he utterly declined to allow Sora Lucia to affix her signature therein. "Hands off, bella donna mia. Hands off-these be no matters for women. These be writings, ," he assured her more than once, with a conscientious show of responsibility which could only proceed from lively remembrances of the terrible Trevisan Commissioner. "A-ah, wouldst thou snatch at it then? when I tell thee these be the writings of my office?"

"She will snatch. She will despoil. She is but a half-wife she fattens on

the children of others;" chanted Fortunata the Widow, in the background of the big room.

Sora Lucia looked from one to the other, clutching her ten francs. "Very good," she said, after a minute of consideration. She had a spot of startling red upon either hollow cheek.

In the morning she spoke more at length. She had a plan to suggest and compensation to offer. Also she required help from an eye-witness.

Never," said Fortunata the Widow. "And why?" argued Sora Lucia patiently. "To content thee, foolish one, I will even make it two francs. Two francs paid to thee out of the money of Tomaso. Therefore cease to swell thyself with vain threatenings of evil. If frogs had teeth they might eat up their fathers and mothers. Be at rest-thou frog !"

"And it is two francs thou offerest to me, woman without shame ?" "Two francs. thy shawl and follow."

Wherefore put on

I come," said Fortunata, after a little pause, "but behold! it shall be I who have charge of the Englishman's letter."

"Never!" said Sora Lucia.

"I come not otherwise. There be oaths to be taken. If thou hast it not upon thee, surely, when the feasts are here, there will be the less trouble about thy confessing. If thou hast it upon thee, the oaths be false. Also I come not," said Fortunata the Widow.

There was as many as a dozen people standing about in the pleasant wintry sunshine before the closed doors of the village post office; but Sora Lucia made her way through the crowd with the easy greeting, the calm assurance, of capital.

Inside, Sor Tomaso bent over an unfilled register. His aching head weighed like a bag of meal upon his aching shoulders; and before his bloodshot eyes the page for the signatures of the recipient was blank.

-And, to thee, it means but the loss of a single week's drinking," said Sora Lucia, in conclusion, "but to me

it is my fortune. And my heart's blood. And iny life. Therefore I came to thee privately, as befits a good neighbor, with this my companion,

ed, it is that fat man fool up yonder who should have paid thee the moneys, not I. And now deliver over to ine the Englishman's letter," said Sora Lucia, pausing between the sheltering hedgerows halfway down the hill.

Fortunata smiled dreamily. "Nay, aged woman, what letter?" she asked, with gentle irony. "Ten francs thou shouldst have received for stealing from me the name of my little Giannino. Ten francs have I just seen paid over to thee, with these mine eyes. For the rest-The dog worries the bone because he cannot swallow it.' Nay, I am weary of thy much discoursing.

"Thief, oh thief. Return, I say, return to me my letter. Bandit !"' "Never-barren woman!" said Fortunata, swinging her empty basket in the air.

Whereupon it follows that two little old women go on living in the big raftered room under the crumbling Cupids, and each one carries on her old breast a ten franc note, carefully hidden in many folds of paper. Neither one will break into her treasure, lest the other should remain the richer, and both taste deeply of the anxious joys of wealth. Perhaps, on some especially bitter night, the chilled life of one or the other of them will flicker away like a candle flame blown out. Then the survivor will possess twenty francs. Meantime, there is open war between Sora Lucia and Fortunata the Widow.-New Review.