They began the ascent of the winding causeway up which Armando had toiled so sadly with his despised Juno and the Peacock. Long stretches of wall bordered the route, which was rough in places and steep, and not at all to the taste of the youngster in the traces. He grew cross and nervous, and shied at such innocent things as a tuft of cowslips on the roadside or an umbel of clematis on the wall. “What kind of horse have you there?” asked Carolina, picking up a valise that had been jolted from the seat several times. “What kind of a horse?” repeated the _cocchiere_, as though unable to credit his ears. “Ah, signora, there is none better in all Genoa; only he is a little green and has had the staggers once. Verily a fine beast.” At the bight of a turning a Franciscan monk came in view suddenly from behind a thicket of myrtle. He wore the brown robe, scanty cape and hood on the shoulders, the girdle of knotted cord, the wooden sandals of his order. The recruit struck up a dance, and would have caracoled to the upsetting of the victoria, had not the monk run forward and caught his head. “I regret that I frightened your horse, signora,” said the friar; “but I think he will go safely now.” To the mind of Aunt Carolina, both the danger and its allayance had sprung from an eminently proper source. To be put in peril by a holy man was a distinction second only to being rescued by one. In thanking her deliverer she made known with pride that she too had been a limb of the Church. “For eight years, father, was I _perpetua_ of the rectory in Mulberry.” The monk crossed himself and trudged on. They were not far now from the last squirm of the highway that serpentined to Cardinali. The angle by the myrtle thicket doubled, they entered upon a road that for half a mile was an almost level shelf on the mountain side. On one hand yawned a precipice that grew deeper as the road wore upward, and all that stood between an ungovernable horse and his driver’s eternity was a low stone wall built along the margin. Carolina would have descended from the vehicle and walked the rest of the way but for the persuasive driver, who promised her upon his honour that all would go well now they had reached a stretch of road that was not steep. He could assure the signora that his horse was kind and gentle at heart, but coming of a lordly stock he loved not the menial task of hauling heavy loads uphill. A person of education like the signora would understand that. Peril? Not a spark of it now that the going was smooth and easy. See! he was behaving better already.