From here he started back again to St. Damian's. He stopped on his way to visit a lazar-house, and help in the care of the lepers. He had quite gotten over all his early antipathies, and it was a joy to him now to minister to those poor diseased ones. Probably he would have spent a much longer season here if it were not that again he seemed to hear the same voice calling him to repair the ruined church. So he left the lazar-house and proceeded on his way. He told his friend the priest that he was in no way disappointed or cast down, and that he had good reason to believe that he would be able to accomplish his purpose. There was only one way in which he could attain this end. Money he had none, neither did he know of anyone who loved God and His cause well enough to expend a little of their riches in rebuilding His house. Next day saw him at work. Up and down the streets of his native town he went begging for stones to rebuild St. Damian. "He who gives me one stone shall receive one blessing, he who gives me two will have two blessings, and he who gives me three, three blessings." [Sidenote: "_He is quite Mad._"] The people were unable to do anything at first from pure astonishment. Francis Bernardone, the gay cavalier, the leader of feasts and song, sueing in the streets like a common beggar! They could hardly believe their eyes! "Truly the fellow was mad," they said to each other! But he did not look mad. His smile was as sweet as ever, and the native, polished, courtly manners that had won for him so many friends, now that they were sanctified, were doubly winning. It was impossible to resist him, and stones were brought him in quantities. Load after load, interminable loads he bore on his back like a labourer to St. Damian. Up the steep little path he toiled between the grey-green olives, on and into the tangle of cypress and pine, and there stone by stone with his own hands he repaired the crumbling walls. It was a long wearisome toilsome work, and told considerably on his health. "He is _quite_ mad," reiterated some as the days passed from spring to summer, and from summer to autumn and from autumn into winter again. But there were others who watched him with tears in their eyes. _They_ knew he was not mad. They realized that a great power had changed the once refined man into a servant of all--even the constraining power of the love of Christ, and they shed tears when they thought how far they came short.