my knees, wrapped in my cloak. In the morning, when I awoke, Virginia was gone. Deeply touched by what I had seen, and still more by the desperate patience with which afflictions so bitter were borne, before I went away I gave the husbandman all the silver money I had left, some few liras, and reserved for my future needs one single ducat, the last gold piece I had. The man thanked me exorbitantly in a voice broken with gratitude, yet almost in the same breath admitted the insufficiency of the gift. "We shall send Virginia into Pistoja to-morrow," he said. "It has come to this, that her brothers and sisters are dying, and she must do what she can." I asked, "Will you send her to beg?" The question was evaded. "She'll do well enough when she's been fed and cleaned, for she's a well-made, handsome girl. There is a great man there--we shall keep the wolf from the door by what she sends us-and maybe have something over. Misery teaches all trades to a man, you see." I trembled and turned pale. "I entreat you," I said, "to do no such dreadful thing. I have serious reasons for asking--very serious. There is one thing which we cannot afford to lose, even if we lose life itself in keeping it. And it is a thing for which we pay so dear now and again that we cannot value it too highly. I mean our self-respect." The peasant looked round upon his hovel and sleeping brood with those famine-bright eyes of his. "Must I keep my self-respect sooner than some of them? Must I not throw one to the wolves sooner than a half-dozen?" He gave over his unhappy survey with a shrug. "It seems I have nothing to get rid of here," he said quietly, "except that valuable thing." I pulled out my gold piece. "Will that keep it safe for you?" I asked. The gleam of the man's eyes upon it was terrible to see. "Will you engage the word of a man that, in exchange for this, you will never do what you have proposed?" "St. Mary help me, I will, sir," he said. The coin changed hands. "Where is Virginia?" I asked him, and he told me that she and Gino her brother had been up before the light and were spreading dung. "Now," said I, "it is proper that I should tell you that I am without a farthing in the world. I say that, not because I grudge you the money, but that you may see how entirely I trust you." "You may trust me indeed, sir," said Virginia's father with tears, and I took my departure.