The monk sprang up and ran out into the rain. Scaling the chapel wall by means of a swaying ladder, he found to his dismay that the cross was within an ace of falling. There was no time to run down to the farm for help, nor even to return to the abbey for tools. The only action that could avail was to stand with his whole weight on the last ridge-stone and to hold up the cross against the wind with his whole strength. Antonio took the cross in his arms. The sou'-wester, roaring like a thousand lions, thrashed him with stinging thongs of cold rain and did its best to hurl him down, cross and all. But he held on. Time after time the ridge shook like a bog under his feet, and the great finial tugged at his arms like a captured beast striving to escape. His hands bled through gripping the sharp edges of the iron. Once or twice, during the first half-hour, he was on the point of relaxing his grasp; but a great thought put endurance into his heart and strength into his arms. He thought of his Lord, cleaving to the cross on Calvary with an intensity of love which fastened Him there more securely than the iron nails. He thought of the darkness which was over all the land from the sixth to the ninth hour. Hitherto the monk had thought of that darkness as a mere absence of light; but, as he clung to the iron, with the brutal tempest howling and roaring and screaming, with the roofs and the trees whining and moaning, and with the icy darts of rain wounding him like thorns, he understood that it was a darkness reeling with all the sin of the world and envenomed with the hot panting of all hell's devils. With blood on both his hands and pains like red-hot needles in both his feet Antonio thanked God for this livelier sense of his Savior's passion, and he repeated the words of Saint Paul, _Mortificationem Jesu in corpore nostro circumferentes_: "Bearing about in our bodies the dying of Jesus." Towards dawn, when the world seemed to be rocking under him and he was ready to faint, Antonio recalled that other night of storm when, in the chapel below, Isabel had nestled in his arms. Her presence seemed to be with him once more. It was as though her white slender hands were helping his to uphold the thick black iron, and as though her soft, sweet tones were murmuring encouragement in his ear. The gale and the rain bellowed and spat, but Isabel's voice softly drowned their din. _Erat cum bestiis, et angelus ministrabat illi_: "He was among wild beasts, and an angel ministered unto him."