But, although he had risen to his feet, he made no attempt to advance, for something in the stern, yet gently pitying, eyes of the other arrested his movement, and, before he could recover from the half-hypnotised condition, the stranger was moving off himself. Then the boy came to life, and ran after the man of God, flinging himself upon his knees, and catching at the hem of his garment, and crying out his sorrow for his sins; the other lifted him up, and bade him be of good cheer, but Raniero, by now, was half blind with weeping and it was some time before he could see or hear clearly. He did not turn back again towards Pisa, but made his way, by slow stages, to the Holy Land—no very safe harbourage in the middle of the Twelfth Century. On arriving, he took off his own clothes, and received from a priest the shirt of a slave, which, for the proper humiliation of the flesh, he continued to wear until he died. Now it is the habit, even of the most broad-minded of our Protesting brethren deliberately to close every avenue by which information might reach their intelligences, and to seal them up tightly, before they embark upon any study of the Saints, or of the Church. In parenthesis, it must be said of the Germans, doubtless true to the Teutonic passion for accuracy, that as a general rule they will and do search after and transcribe the true facts of a happening, at whatever cost to their own private feelings—as Haeckel found to his cost. Not so with the English. They glory in incredulity—and prune their belief daily until nothing more than the bare tree is left. So that one is not in the least astonished to find in the middle of an Englishman’s otherwise fairly faithful tale a shocked horror—indeed, it cannot be described in any other terms—at the thought of the desert’s being an abiding-place for devils. People, on the other hand, find that people with any real experience of the desert are quite ready to believe that anything horrible might he found there. If ever there was a proper ballroom for Satan, says one, it is the desert! St. Raniero found them there, aplenty—so did St. Anthony—and St. Ephrem—and St. Procopius and St. Jerome, and many, many more. St. Raniero vowed himself to abstinence, and a hard struggle he found it to be until one morning, very early, when after a night of tossing and turning and praying, he fell asleep and dreamed that a wonderfully wrought vessel of gold, covered with the most beautiful gems, stood beside him. It was full of pitch and sulphur, and these presently ignited, burning fiercely, and threatening the destruction of the vase. But, just as it seemed to be on the point of destruction, a little phial containing a few drops of water appeared, and he was bidden to sprinkle some upon the fire; he did so with some difficulty, since it was burning so fiercely, and, behold! the fire was extinguished in a moment.