One autumn I was in Sicily, making a number of mountain excursions, visiting remote villages hidden in rocky clefts, or perched boldly on spurs in the eye of the sun, sleeping occasionally at night in humble rooms to which the gobbling turkey and the audacious pig were no strangers. Among my many memories of those free and happy days one stands out—the memory of a tress of splendid black hair. On an afternoon, near sunset, I rode up to the edge of a hamlet of huddled dwellings, where stood a large, old church, Arabic-Norman in style, and here I dismounted to rest and fill my eyes and heart with the wonder and the glory of Nature. As I gazed I remember thinking: “How small humanity is!” A fat old priest shuffled up to recall me from my reveries. He cleared his throat, saluted me, and begged me to come and see his church. We went into the sacristy, and presently stood before an immense and mouldy cupboard. After much struggling with a rusty key the doors were opened, and I was confronted by a large wooden statue of the Madonna and Child, covered with fading but still hideous colours, and flecked with the dust of ages. I scarcely noticed the statue, however, for my eyes had fallen upon something else—a great plait of glorious black hair, thick, long, twisted with reverent care, strong strand through strand, tied at the top and bottom by bows of rose-red satin. It hung to the wrist of the Madonna, and was touched by the little outstretched foot of the infant Jesus. I looked inquiringly at the priest. “That is Pancrazia’s hair, signore.” “Pancrazia’s hair! Who is, or was, Pancrazia?” An expression came into the priest’s face that transformed it—a look so human, so tender, even so mystical, that suddenly I loved this old man in his rusty soutane and his wrinkled, patched boots. I sat down on a wooden box that stood just below the statue, and the priest told me the story of the tress of hair. I give it in his words, so far as I remember them. But I cannot give the look in his eyes while he was speaking, or the almost childishly beautiful simplicity and sincerity of his manner. “Pancrazia was never a handsome girl, but always she looked a good girl. And then she had the most beautiful hair in the village, or, indeed, in all the country round. When she was a child it was full of gleams of gold, but the underneath was always dark; and, as she grew, the darkness of it crept up, till all over her head the hair was black. Only in the front, by her temples, there remained little feathers of gold, which fell down near her kind, pious eyes—eyes that could be merry, too, and laugh as readily as the eyes of the wicked and the wanton.