her endurance was almost at an end, and she had become sick with very fear, there came a lull in the proceedings; a hymn was sung, and part of the congregation went out. Innocent made an anxious effort to go too, but the old woman stood immovable between her and the door, and the girl watched with agony the last figures retiring, and an evident movement to begin again taking place. “Let me go! Let me go!” she cried in her terror. The old woman clutched her shoulder with long, lean fingers, which looked like claws to the girl’s excited fancy. She approached her face to Innocent’s ear, and hoarsely whispered something which she did not understand. Innocent was half frantic with fear. She did not know what might be the next step. It seemed to her that other people were approaching her, and that she saw the gleam of knives, an idea which was natural enough to her Italian breeding. She uttered one loud shriek, and springing over into the pew in front rushed out of the chapel, pushing down someone in her passage. It seemed to her that she heard steps pursuing as she flew madly along the dimly-lighted road. She had taken the turn towards London in her bewilderment, and by the time she lost breath and was obliged to stop, had come to the verge of a greater thoroughfare, crowded and noisy. No one had come after her, though she had thought she heard steps resounding close behind. She stopped short, panting for breath; and, leaning against a wall, looked round her in dismay up at the dark sky, and down at the muddy road, and along the long line of dim lamps and passing figures, all strange, and without help for her. When the full sense of her helplessness, her loneliness, her desolation, burst upon her, she crouched down upon the pavement close to the wall, and burst into tears. “Niccolo! Niccolo!” she cried, with a wail of childish despair. Another girl in such circumstances would have called upon God or her mother; but Innocent knew nothing of her mother, and very little of God. The only being who had always been helpful to her was Niccolo. She called upon him with a bitter cry of helplessness. Niccolo in Pisa--how could he come to her? What could he do for her? But other help--less tender, less sure than Niccolo’s--was approaching slowly to her along the crowded way. CHAPTER XVII. FREDERICK TO THE RESCUE. “What is wrong?” said one of two young men who were coming along the road. “Bah! what does it matter to us?” said his companion.