I always had a very tender spot for the Reverendo, and it became something uncomfortably near pity when I heard, from our servants, of certain straits to which he was put in order to appear properly at the little gatherings to which we were always inviting him. He lived a long way from our house, and his means quite forbade the luxury of cabs, so in all weathers he came on foot. The carefully turned-up evening trousers could be kept out of the mud, but not so the shoes below; so the Reverendo brought clean ones—and evening socks—with him. The porter’s lodge was just inside the _porte-cochère_, and he would turn in there, regardless of what the inhabitants might be doing, sit down, pull off the condemned foot-gear, toss it into various corners, put on the clean things, and walk upstairs—all without a single word to the porter’s wife and children, who put him down, quite smilingly, as another “mad Englishman.” When the function upstairs was over he would reappear, change once more, and depart, always in perfect silence. But one evening Mrs. Porter told my maid she could have wept for the poor gentleman! He came in as usual, sat down and pulled off boots and socks, flung them away, and then discovered that he had forgotten to bring fresh ones. Quite meekly he gathered up the muddy articles, put them on and disappeared into the night, to return, nearly an hour later, with his forgotten properties and go through the whole ceremony over again. Like so many quiet cultivated Englishmen whom circumstances more than taste have landed in the “Establishment,” for life, he had the social instinct very strongly developed, loved bright society, and never refused an invitation. He caught gladly at the idea of riding through Sabina with us, and I knew that our expedition would be a success, which it might not have been without the little spice of interest that an outsider always brings into an otherwise too strictly family party. So, one divine September morning, we four rode forth, my dear mother almost crying at our temerity in facing the brigands who were then supposed to haunt the Eastern Hills. “Do bring back your ears with you!” was her parting recommendation, and I know that during the days of our absence she constantly dreaded receiving the grim packet of severed ears which the old-time brigands were in the habit of sending, with their little account for ransom, to the relatives of those they had captured.