Some months passed over without anything worthy of record, but the sequel of this narrative is to come. A friar, unknown to the inhabitants of our village, appeared one Sunday morning to perform mass in the Church of San Rocco. His shaven crown, bronzed skin, and high aquiline features made him an object of intense veneration among the devout congregation, as being unmistakable signs of a pure and austere life. He was a man of middle age, tall, and well knit, his beard on the verge of turning grey. The features were worn, but energetic, yet a physiognomist might have observed that the eyes were somewhat small in comparison with the rest of the face and moved rather too rapidly and furtively from left to right than was strictly necessary to complete the physiognomy of one whose life had been completely devoted to religious contemplation. His arrival had created a sensation in the village, and many who had never confessed from one year's end to the other, impelled by curiosity, flocked to the church that day to confess to the stranger monk, imagining, no doubt, that the absolution of one from afar and unknown in the villages was more valid than that of the arch-priest or any more familiar prelate. Familiarity breeds contempt, as we all know, therefore we so often find that Roman Catholics prefer confessing to some priest or friar that they meet for the first time, and are not likely to meet again, rather than to their parish priest, to whom the most secret thought of their inner lives is already known. Among those who flocked to confess to the stranger monk, whose majestic bearing had impressed everyone with his sanctity, were our two friends Antonio and Peppe, who, having neither of them confessed for a very long time, sought this opportunity of disburdening their souls of those sins they were ashamed of confessing to a priest of their own native village. Antonio, to whom I am indebted for the sequel of this tale, declared to me that he experienced a thrill he was unable to account for as the friar entered the confessional; but setting this down to nervousness at not having confessed for so long, he endeavoured to concentrate his thoughts, and began what is called a "general confession," commencing with the sins of his earliest childhood down to those of recent date. Fancying that he might have been guilty of avarice in pressing too hardly on his friend for the debt of the three pauls and of sacrilege in having hidden all night in the confessional, and afterwards quarrelling with his friend over the treasure within the very church itself, it occurred to him to relate the whole circumstance to the father confessor, not omitting the entry of the brigands and their subsequent fright at what they supposed to be the sudden resurrection of one from the dead.