having been born somewhere late in the third century; that every morning the sacristan gathers it with a sponge and preserves it in bottles; and that the people of Bari and all that region have so great a faith in the saint and his miraculous 'manna’ that they use it for every malady. He ended by promising to send to his brother, an archbishop somewhere in the south of Italy, to procure a bottle of this precious liquor for me. In a few days he brought it. Here it is!” The Signora brought from a little shrine that closed with a door in the wall, and displayed, a bottle filled with what appeared to be the brightest and most limpid water. “Monsignor showed me a similar bottle that he has had forty years,” she continued, “and it was as pure and bright as this—perfectly unchanged. He had opened it, now and then, to take out a few drops. Some years ago he gave a bottle also to the Holy Father, who keeps it beside his bed on a little shelf. Here is the picture of my saint.” It was a quaint old print, copied, doubtless, from a picture in the church of St. Nicholas, in Bari, and represented the sainted archbishop standing on the shore, with the sea and ships behind him. At his right knelt a youth on the sands; at his left three infants were rising out of a tub, commemorative of two of his miracles. “After having given me this relic of his great patron, Monsignor, full of zeal for his honor and of pity for my ignorance, began to tell me something of his life, and how knowing of an impoverished noble family, driven to desperation by need, and almost deciding to sell the daughters to a life of vice, since they had no money to marry them, this young saint went slily by night, and dropped a bag of gold in at the window sufficient for a _dot_ for the eldest; and, after a while, in the same manner, provided for the others, the family rejoicing over their escape and repenting of their evil resolution. When Monsignor had got so far with his story, I broke out, 'Why, it is Santa Claus!’ And, sure enough, it was. The great saint was no longer a stranger to me. I had known, without knowing, him all my life, from the time when I had first read the wonderful illustrated story-books of Christmas, and seen my mother hang my stocking in the chimney-corner before taking me off to bed on Christmas eve.” The Signora was very glad to have this little story to tell by way of making an inclined plane to the saying of good-night. Undercover of it she escaped to her own room without being entrapped into a private interview, which she almost suspected Mr. Vane of plotting. Then they had a little expedition for the morning to see the making of tapestry in the great hospice of St. Michael.