'Et tecum, frater, pax,' was Bellarion's mechanical answer, what time he studied this stranger's villainous, patibulary countenance, marking the animal looseness of mouth, and the craft peering from the little eyes that were black beads thrust into a face of clay. A closer scrutiny softened his judgment. The man's face was disfigured, ridged, scarred, and pitted from the smallpox. These scars had contracted the skin about the eyes, thus altering their expression, and to the ravages of the disease was also due the sickly pallor overspreading cheek and brow. Considering this and the habit which the man wore--a habit which Bellarion had no cause to associate with anything that was not sweet and good--he disposed himself to make amends for the hastiness of his first assumptions. 'Benedictus sis,' he murmured, and with that abandoned Latin for the vulgar tongue. 'I bless the Providence that sends you to a poor traveller who has lost his way.' The friar laughed aloud at that, and the lingering apprehension left his eyes, which thus relieved grew pleasanter to look upon. 'Lord! Lord! And I like a fool and coward, having almost trod upon you, was for creeping off in haste, supposing you a sleeping robber. This forest is a very sanctuary of thieves. They infest it, thick as rabbits in a warren.' 'Why, then, do you adventure in it?' 'Why? Ohé! And what shall they steal from a poor friar-mendicant? My beads? My girdle?' He laughed again. A humorous fellow, clearly, taking a proper saintly joy in his indigenous condition. 'No, no, my brother. I have no cause to go in fear of thieves.' 'Yet supposing me a thief, you were in fear of me?' The man's smile froze. This stripling's simple logic was disconcerting. 'I feared,' he said at last, slowly and solemnly, 'your fear of me. A hideous passion, fear, in man or beast. It makes men murderers at times. Had you been the robber I supposed you, and, waking suddenly, found me beside you, you might have suspected some intent to harm you. It is easily guessed what would have followed then.' Bellarion nodded thoughtfully. No explanation could have been more complete. The man was not only virtuous, but wise. 'Whither do you journey, brother?' 'To Pavia,' Bellarion answered him, 'by way of Santa Tenda.' 'Santa Tenda! Why, that is my way too; at least as far as the Augustinian Monastery on the Sesia. Wait here, my son, and we will go together. It is good to have a comrade on a journey. Wait but some few moments, to give me time to bathe, which is the purpose for which I came. I will not keep you long.' He went striding off through the grass. Bellarion called after him: 'Where do you bathe?' Over his shoulder the friar answered him: 'There is a rivulet down yonder. But a little way. Do not stray from that spot, so that I may find you again, my son.'