About an hour before midnight he reached a moss-grown aqueduct which supplied the water-wheel of a lonely orangery. Climbing the bank from which its clear spring gushed forth, the tired wayfarer sat down on the warm stones and opened the cura's package. It held a bottle of green wine, a loaf of rye bread, and some hunks of cold boiled beef; also, wrapped up in many wrappings, one more English pound. Tears came into the monk's eyes. Throughout the griefs and partings of the two days just past he had been dry-eyed and calm: but this was beyond bearing. Mechanically holding open in his hand the book which it was too dark to read, he recited Compline, adding a heartfelt supplication for the cura's good estate. Then he ate a little of the dark bread, drank a few cool draughts from the hurrying spring, and lay down to sleep. Before slumber had fully sealed his eyelids some sudden influence roused Antonio up. As plainly as if an angel's voice had spoken, he knew that in that moment the soul of the Abbot had passed to God. He arose and sank upon his knees, devoutly offering fervent prayers. Then he lay down once more, strangely filled with peace and with a feeling that all was well. He could not sleep; but he lay looking up into the violet heavens as though he half expected to see appearing in their highest heights a new bright star. II June morn after June morn, June eve after June eve, Antonio steadily tramped towards Oporto. He usually rested in some grove or on the seashore from nightfall until dawn, and from about ten in the morning until four in the afternoon: but he was rarely on the march less than twelve hours a day. Jealously guarding his little hoard he never spent a vintem that he could fairly save. For example, as he approached the mouth of the Mondego, he learned that the ferryman expected a pataco for the passage. A pataco is two vintens: so Antonio made a detour to the east and swam the stream at a lonely spot, pushing his clothes before him on a tiny raft of osiers. The cura's beef and bread and wine fed him for two days, and when they were consumed the monk lived on a tostão a day. His food was mainly dark bread; but he allowed himself, morning and evening, a small goat's-milk cheese and a draught of wine at a roadside tavern, for which he paid one pataco, or sometimes less. Once he caught two trout in a wayside stream, taking them with his hand from a pool as he had learned to do as a boy. A bit of a broken horseshoe and a flint enabled him to kindle a cook's fire in a little hollow.