It was Sunday. It was early morning. It was raining,--a fine quiet, determined rain, that blurred the lower reaches of the valley, and entirely hid the mountain-tops, so that one found it hard not to doubt a little whether they were still there. Near at hand the garden was as if a thin web of silver had been cast over it, pale and dim, where wet surfaces reflected the diffused daylight. And just across the Rampio, on the olive-clad hillside that rose abruptly from its brink, rather an interesting process was taking place,--the fabrication of clouds, no less. The hillside, with its rondure of blue-grey foliage, would lie for a moment quite bare and clear; then, at some high point, a mist would begin to form, would appear indeed to issue from the earth, as smoke from a subterranean fire, white smoke with pearly shadows; would thicken and spread out; would draw together and rise in an irregular spiral column, curling, swaying, poising, as if uncertain what to do next; and at last, all at once making up its mind, (how like a younker or a prodigal!), would go sailing away, straggling away, amorphous, on a puff of wind, leaving the hillside clear again;--till, presently, the process would recommence _da capo_. John and Annunziata, seated together on a marble bench in the shelter of the great cloister, with its faded frescoes, at the north-eastern extremity of the castle buildings, had been watching this element-play for some minutes in silence. But by-and-by Annunziata spoke. "What makes the cloud come out of the hill like that?" she asked, her eyes anxiously questioning his. "I have seen it happen many times, but I could never understand it. There cannot be a fire underneath?" "If _you_ can't understand it, Mistress Wisdom," responded John, smiling on her, "you surely mustn't expect a featherpate like me to. Between ourselves, I don't believe any one can really understand it, though there's a variety of the human species called scientists who might pretend they could. It's all a part of that great scheme of miracles by which God's world goes on, Nature, which nobody can really understand in the very least. All that the chaps called scientists can really do is to observe and more or less give names to the miracles. They can't explain 'em." "It is great pleasure to watch such things," said Annunziata. "It is a great blessing to be allowed to see a miracle performed with your own eyes." "So it is," agreed John. "And if you keep your eyes well open, there's not a minute of the livelong day when you mayn't see one." "It is very strange," said Annunziata, "but when the sun shines, then I love the sunny weather, and am glad that it does not rain. Yet when it does rain, then I find that I love the rain too, that I love it just as much as the sun,--it is so fresh, it smells so good, the raindrops are so pretty, and they make such a pretty sound where they fall, and the grey light is so pleasant."