"Well," she went on, throwing back her head, "if you lose your ship, come to me, and--I'll see you have another!" Above in his chamber at the inn, not long thereafter, the priest, looking out of the window, saw a line of men file down the narrow stairs; embark in the small boats from the sheltered nook where they lay, and later, in the light of the moon, breaking from between scudding clouds and angry vapors, a ship that got under way--glided like a phantom craft from the haven and set seaward through the foam. CHAPTER XIV THE PILGRIMAGE From far and near the peasants and the people of the towns and villages, joined in the customary annual descent upon--or ascent to--the Mount. None was too poor, few too miserable, to undertake the journey. A pilgrimage, was the occasion called; but although certain religious ceremonies were duly observed and entered into by some with fanatical warmth, many there were, who, obliged to pay tithes, nourished the onerous recollection of the enforced "ecclesiastical tenth" to the exclusion of any great desire to avail themselves of the compensating privilege of beholding and bowing before the sacred relics. To these recalcitrant spirits, license and a rough sort of merrymaking became the order of the hour. Early in the morning the multitude began to arrive--in every manner of dilapidated vehicle, astride starved-looking donkeys and bony horses, or on foot. Many who had camped out the night before, by wayside or in forest, brought with them certain scanty provisions and a kitchen pot in which to boil thin soup, or some poor makeshift mess; others came empty-handed, "pilgrims" out at the elbow and shoeless, trusting to fortune for their sustenance, and looking capable even of having poached in one of the wide forests they had traversed, despite a penalty, severe and disproportionate to the offense, for laying hand on any lord's wild birds or rabbits. Savage men; sodden men--good, bad and indifferent! Like ants thronging about the hill, they straightway streamed to the Mount; took possession of it, or as much as lay open to them; for around the top, chosen abode of the Governor, extended a wall; grim, dark and ominous; bristling with holes which seemed to look blackly down; to watch, to listen and to frown. Without that pretentious line of encircling masonry, the usual din, accompaniment to the day and the presence of so many people, prevailed; within, reigned silence, a solemn hush, unbroken by even a sentinel's tread. "I shall be glad when it's all over!" Standing at the window of her chamber the Lady Elise had paused in dressing to look out upon the throng--a thousand clots upon the sand, dark moving masses in the narrow byways, and motionless ones near the temporary altars. "Oh, my Lady!" Her companion, and former nurse, a woman about fifty years of age, ventured this mild expostulation. "There, Marie! You can go!" "Yes, your Ladyship--"