"You are of the Church, it may be?" asked he, evidently thinking of our reverence at the well-stoop. We shook our heads. "It matters not," said the easy father; "you are, I perceive, good Christians. Not like these people of Spellino, who care neither for priest nor pastor." "There he goes," said the priest, pointing out of the window at a man in plain and homely black who went by--the sight of whom, as he went, took me back to the village streets of Dullarg when I saw the minister go by. I had a sense that I ought to have been out there with him, instead of sitting in the presbytery of the Pope's priest. But the father thought not of that, and the Montepulciano was certainly most excellent. "A bad, bad village," said the father, looking about him as if in search of something. "Margherita!" he cried suddenly. An old woman appeared, dropping a bleared courtesy, unlike her queenly name. "What have you for dinner, Margherita? "Enough for one; not enough for three, and they hungry off the road," she said. "If thou, O father, art about to feed the _lazzaroni_ of the north and south thou must at least give some notice, and engage another servant!" "Nay, good Margherita," answered the priest very meekly, "there is enough boiled fowl and risotto of liver and rice to serve half a score of appetites. See to it," he said. Margherita went grumbling away. What with beggars and leaping dogs, besides children crawling about the steps, it was ill living in such a presbytery--one also which was at any rate so old that no one could keep it clean, though they laboured twenty-four hours in the day--ay, and rose betimes upon the next day. As the lady said, the place was old. Father Philip told us that it had been the wing of a monastery. "See," he said, "I will show you." So saying, he led us through a wide, cool, dusky place, with arched roof and high windows, the walls blotched and peeling, with the steam of many monkish dinners. The doors had been mostly closed up, and only at one side did an open window and archway give glimpses of pillared cloisters and living green. We begged that we might sit out here, which the priest gladly allowed, for the sight of the green grass and the tall white lilies standing amid was a mighty refreshment in the hot noontide. Sunshine flickered through the mulberry and one grey cherry-tree, and sifted down on the grass. Then the priest told us all the sin of the villagers of Spellino. It was not that a remnant of the Waldenses was allowed to live there. The priest did not object to good Waldensians. But the people of Spellino would neither pay priest nor pastor. They were infidels.