and in the dust by every shrine I passed, Save thou that soul,' I prayed.

"God answered me. At Easter, pale and sad, she came down humbly to the church, was shriven, and once more side by side we knelt to receive the Blessed Sacrament. Then she went back again, and ten days later one came with haste to bid me go to her, for her babe was born, and she was dying. Did I weep or moan as now? My father, while I sped along the steep ascent, following my little gypsy guide, I laughed and sang and gave God thanks. For the Padre was gone before us, bearing our Lord to strengthen her, and my sister, my Beatrice, was dying in his love, and going to him, and no one could ever hurt her soul again.

"There she lay in a rough, rude tent; men and women far more rough and rude were standing round her awestruck. The Padre had already heard her make confession. I knelt by her and saw the sore contrition on her face; I saw her made strong with the viaticum and anointed with the sacred oil; I saw and she saw her child made God's child ere she died. When it was signed with the holy sign, and lay all white and holy in my arms, she beckoned me to come close to her. 'Promise me,' she whispered, and the dews of death were on her lips, and her breath struck chill against my face, 'promise me. Not like his father -never let him be like his father. Keep him good and pure.'

"Then I knelt down by her and looked straight into her dying eyes. 'At God's judgment-seat,' I said, and my voice sounded in my ears like some unknown voice solemn and dread to hear; 'at God's judgmentseat I will give you back this soul, holy and pure as now, God and our Lady helping me.' And suddenly, as one who knows not what he does, I bent me down and pressed my lips to hers where the Holy Host had

lately been. By the seven sacraments,' I said, 'and our Lord's seven blood-sheddings, and the seven griefs of our Lady, I will give thee back this soul that awful day, holy and pure as now.'

"Hear her, my God!' she said, and then she died.

"I watched that night beside her. All night long, around a great camp fire, the gypsy men and women sang and drank and made their hideous incantations, and the shadows danced about me in the lonely tent, and her face shone white and still beside me, and her baby slept upon my knee. The winds blew through the forest trees like funeral music, chanting even my own promise in my ears, I will give you back this soul, holy and pure as now, holy and pure as now.' I sang it, too, with solemn gladness beside my dead. Presently the babe stirred on my knee, and then I looked at him. Intent on her till then, I had hardly marked his face. Now by the ghostly light I saw it, and lo! no sign of my Beatrice was on it. Large, dark, and beautiful, with a beauty that one shrank from, he was all his father; and when he opened his eyes, they were great black eyes like those I dreaded most.

"And suddenly I understood what an awful vow I had bound me with forever. The water of baptism was hardly dry upon his brow, and holy and pure as now I had promised to restore him to his mother, this child stamped with the likeness of the worst of men. A great fear fell upon me; still holding her babe, I knelt again beside the mother. 'Jesus, Mary, help me,' I prayed. And then-it was not as if I did it of my own will, some divine thing moved me, God knows what-it was no rash vow, God prompted it, 'By thy seven sacraments,' I cried, 'by thy seven blood-sheddings, by thy Mother's seven griefs, O Jesu, grant me to see this soul holy and pure as now at the awful day, and wholly

and forever I give myself and it to thee, and to thee alone.' Then peace fell upon my soul, and I waited for the dawn.

"I had hoped that they would bring my Beatrice and lay her in consecrated ground, but when day came, her husband utterly refused. She was his, he said. I wept sore, but in my heart was a great rejoicing too. He had no power now to touch her soul, it was safe forever in the hand of God; and her body which he thought was his to do with as he would, God could raise up at the last from the wild mountain gorge to his own holy city in spite of him. I lifted the boy and essayed to go my way. And then he claimed him. God and his angels were with me then. I stood there, a weak woman, before that lawless man; I strained the child to my heart, and I made the sign of the cross before the father and myself. In the name of God,' I said, 'leave this child with me and him. Wilt ruin his soul, too?' He drew back with a scared look on his face, and I went straight forth with my darling in my arms. My God! My God!"

The anguish swept over her face again; the priest's lips moved as he saw it, but he spoke to God and not to her; he understood that it was no word from him she needed now, but that the truest comfort he could give her was to let her speak as she would without interruption. She wound her arms into each other and around her, till he who saw her groaned in pity at the sight of such self-inflicted pain, but he knew, too, that it was a real relief for far worse mental tor

ture.

"Madonna," she cried, "where is he now? Do you see that my arms are empty, and my heart is empty, and my vow is broken? Thou who didst lose thy Son three days with no fault of thine, and mourned him sore, my boy is lost forever, and forever, and forever. What do you say to that, Madonna?

Yes, father, lost forever. In her own month too, when who so happy as I before her shrine with my flowers and my prayers, and my boymy boy! It had been a day of brightest sunshine-O sun, that I can never love to see again!-I brought my little Paolo down beside the sea, to wait the coming of the boats. Behind me, as I walked, I heard the women say how fair I was, and how I loved my sister's child; and they wondered what would be if ever I had children of my own to claim my heart. I only smiled, and clasped him closer to me. They knew not of my vow.

"Around the point came the shouts of men calling for help to drag the nets to shore; I laid Paolo on the soft white sand, and ran to help them. It was so short a time that I was gone, the shadow of the rock near which I laid him had hardly moved a man's length on the sand, but when I came again he was no longer there. We soughtthe whole town helping-we sought hour by hour in vain. At last a boat put in with haste and fear, and the owner said they had fled home before a foreign bark of pirates, and had seen on board a tall Moor standing in the prow with a darkhaired baby in his arms.”

She was not weeping now; the passion had died down in her voice ; she spoke in tones of dull despair.

"Can you fancy what it is to have held a child for eight months, night and day, upon your heart; to have loved it as you never loved an earthly thing before; to have needed not, missed not, parent, sister, lover, while you had him? And then to feel the baby hand no longer on your neck; to miss the baby cry and smile; to have your home and your heart empty, empty? Many and many a woman knows that pang, father. I know more. Gone from my heart, and gone from the Sacred Heart as well; gone from our Lady, gone from priest and prayer; gone

where men mock at the holy faith; gone, with his father's face and eyes and soul, to be made like his father, and to sin and die, in spite of all my prayers and vows. I have no hope! I have no hope! My boy is lost forever and forever!"

Up from the village by the sea came the sweet notes of the vesper bell. "Daughter," the priest said, thoughtfully, "God has sent me to you. I preach in the church tonight. Come there and listen to my words. Till then, farewell, and trust in God. Pray as you used-the very prayers and make the very

He blessed her as she knelt beside the shrine, then hastened down the path. The woman lifted face and hands, with a great hope awakening in her heart, and did as he had bidden her, then followed him.

The village church was thronged that night; sailors were there, and sailors' wives and children, for the strange preacher was to speak of something which appealed strongly to their hearts, living as they did in constant danger from pirates, who infested all that coast. He told them good tidings that fair May evening. He told them of the religious order founded many years previous by command of the Mother of God herself, for redeeming captives from the power of the infidel; of the great need for such an order; of the danger of eternal ruin for many baptized souls if none came to rescue them from their temporal slavery. He told of the many men who had joined the order; of those who prayed, and those who preached, and those who begged for alms; of some who had given their very selves in exchange for captives, choosing to let their fellow-men go free, and to live as slaves, and die, if need be, in their stead. And looking on the eager faces lifted to his own-faces pale with bitter memories and heartsore longings, and wet with tears for the loved and lost-he pleaded with VOL. XII.-6

them to give of their goods and of their prayers to ransom their brethren, perhaps their own kith and kin, from Satan's power.

Many gave of gold and silver that night, and many prayed. One soul, listening with bated breath, moaning no longer in despairing pain, heard and heeded the few words which called to a truer self-denial, an entire consecration. One woman, her reason unstrung by grief, but her faith and love strung up to intensest fervor, caught the holy flame from those holy lips, heard Christ call her to leave all and follow him, and obeyed the call as far as she then knew how. "Rome, Rome "-that was what the preacher said, or so at least she understood him-at Rome the work was done. Under that full blazing moon whose tiny bow but two weeks since had witnessed all her loss, Luisa sped along the mountain-path which led north to Rome. far away it was she never thought or cared; she would have gone round the whole world as if with winged feet gladly, buoyed by the great hope filling all her heart, that her child would yet be saved. "I shall keep my vow," she whispered through the night. "Madonna," she prayed before the moonlit. shrines, Madonna, thou and I will find him yet, and I shall keep my vow." It never crossed her mind that the preacher meant that she should wait and speak to him; she had listened as he bade, she had prayed the prayers and vowed the vows again; her Lord had called her, and why should she delay?

66

How

The priest asked for her, and people sought her that evening, all in vain. "She knows not what she does," they told him, speaking with pitying tenderness of one who had no need of pity now. They could not understand why the stranger seemed to care so much for her, but he was conscious more and more of some strange prescience that God had meant this woman to be of use

to him and to his order, and now where was she? "If she knows not what she does, God knows," he said. "He can work his work in his own way;" and praying for her, he too set out for Rome. His journey was by sea, with favoring wind and tide; soon he was at home, but no day passed without a prayer, a thought of pity, for her who, one short hour, had come into his life. Pity for her! What though her feet bled, and her whole frame ached, and often hungry and weary, she slept beneath the stars? She was going to find her child; our Lady of Ransom would surely give her back her child; God had him in his holy keeping, wait ing, only waiting, for her to come.

When at last Rome burst upon her view, how was she to find, in those crowded streets, the guide she sought? How, but with the same dauntless prayer and patience wherewith she had made her way as far as this. One day a priest beheld a woman kneeling at a shrine in one of Rome's great thoroughfares, too wrapped in prayer to notice those who passed, and he paused amazed at seeing his own prayers answered, then chid himself for his little faith. "I know not how I came," she told him. "God brought me. I drank of the brook and fed on roots, herbs, anything. All the time I prayed my prayer, and vowed my vow. Now let me go to save my boy."

Slowly, while she spoke, came back to him the story he had been told by others in her southern home. Who the pirates were whom the boatmen had seen, no one could guess; they differed from those who usually harassed their coasts. It was doubtful if the child was really Luisa's, and even if it were, there had been time to sell him far inland. Moreover, many children were carried off to Africa from time to time; how could she trace her own? But stronger than all such reasoning, though receiving additional weight from it,

was the priest's sense of Luisa's real vocation.

"What do you say is your wish?” he asked at length, his measured tones a strong contrast to her eager, rapid answer.

"I will go at once," she said, only tell me how. Wherever you bid, alone, without money, without friends, to save my boy; even to sell myself for him as you said that night."

He listened to her with no sign of emotion, but his heart was full of prayer to God, and of thankfulness to him for his work on childlike souls. She who had done so much for the sake of a baby not her own, could do far more for Christ.

"Is this your chief wish?" he asked.

She paused. He was conscious that she was struggling with some interior emotion. "I do not know,' she said at last. "I do not know what it means. It is-I must-O let this be God's will."

"Suppose," he went on with the same perfect calmness, "suppose God willed to grant your prayer, and to fulfil your vow, but not in your way at all; not by any means which you saw fit and proper? Suppose that he has taken you at your word, and wills that you shall indeed be his wholly, apart from all earthly ties, even that which seemed to you so sacred, and that in some way which perhaps you will never know in this life.

He will take care that your child shall serve him thus, given, indeed, with the full meaning of your words, to God, and to God alone? Have you never thought that your vow implied the giving up your child itself for the love of God?"

"And I do nothing, father?" "Is this, then, nothing?" he asked. "Is it nothing to besiege God night and day with prayers, not for one soul which you love, but for all souls whom he loves? He has no need of you to love that child, He asks of you your will alone, your

faith, yourself. All else he will have you leave to him. Remember that you vowed to give everything for God."

Into a church near by, Luisa went, away from the glare and tumult of the world without, into the shadow and the silence, into the nearness of the marvellous Presence whose Sacred Heart was calling her to Him, and to Him alone. There she was to make her choice; and there at first a flood of memories swept over her, till it seemed for a time as if strength, and will, and life itself must fail. Again she felt the baby hand upon her neck, the baby kiss upon her lips, again the child was lying in her arms, and she was on the beach and in the forest, and climbing the mountain-paths, feeling no weariness or grief while his smile cheered her. And once more fancy painted his present and future lot, sold into a slavery of soul far worse than that of the body, growing up evil, lawless, unbelieving; dying at last an infidel among infidels; meeting her and mocking her before the throne.

A wild fire was blazing in her heart. Miles seemed as nothing, and the sea as solid rock, before her eager faith, and that strange land like some familiar place where all would know her, and she would find her boy at once, or else die joyfully, seeing him forever free. How could she trust her sacred charge to any other, even to God himself? Surely, he willed to use her as his instrument.

So she looked up with all that pain tugging at her heart, rending it, driving her almost mad, and behold, she was quite alone in the silent church, alone with her Lord. She

crept nearer to the altar, nearer to the sacred shrine, nearer to the Sacred Heart. On the wall was a great painting, the Lord of all things hanging dead upon a ghastly cross; at its foot the Mother of Sorrows looking intensely at her son. "Madonna!"

Once more the cry broke forth in all its passionate wildness, but there it stayed. For awhile she did not speak, she was not conscious that she thought, she only gazed steadily, while the silence and the peace wrapped weary frame and tortured soul alike into a deeper rest than sleep could be, and "without noise of words" God the Holy Ghost taught her by his unearthly wisdom.

What was her grief compared to this grief; what was her loss compared to this? Yet grave and firm in all her anguish, that Holy Mother stood there, and made no effort to spare her Son a moment's pain. God's will, not ours, God's will alone be done.

Still she looked upward; some divine voice was calling her, speaking to her inmost soul. This Blessed One, with the wounded and broken Heart, loved her, was asking for her love. And overwhelming all else, an answering love awoke within her, a foretaste of deeper rapture yet to be. He could save her boy without her help; all He wanted of her was to plead and to suffer with Him. That was all.

Beside or in that quiet church, Luisa had her daily home. Where she slept few knew; often she did not sleep at all, but watched the whole night through, beneath the stars. When the sun shone hottest in the Roman sky, she stood, bareheaded, barefooted, in tattered raiment, begging alms of those who passed, "for the love of our Lady of Ransom." The words were simple, yet people rarely heard them carelessly; something in the tone thrilled one's soul with a sense of more than ordinary want and woe. Three hours each day she begged from men. The rest of her time, she knelt, a beggar, a queen, a royal handmaid, before God. People came to the church for the very purpose of watching her uplifted face in its more than angelic fervor of devotion, and to catch some sparks of such ardent