Without all was silent; there was no such rustle of a multitude as I listened for. And then I observed in my cell a little shepherd-lad who had been wont to come that way for my blessing upon occasions. He was half naked, as lithe as a snake and almost as brown. What did he there? And then someone else stirred--an elderly peasant-woman with a wrinkled kindly face and soft dark eyes, whom I did not know at all. Somehow, as my mind grew clearer, last night seemed ages remote. I looked at the priest again. “Father,” I murmured, “what has happened?” His answer amazed me. He started violently. Looked more closely, and suddenly cried out: “He knows me! He knows me! Deo gratias!” And he fell upon his knees Now here it seemed to me was a sort of madness. “Why should I not know you?” quoth I. The old woman peered at me. “Ay, blessed be Heaven! He is awake at last, and himself again.” She turned to the lad, who was staring at me, grinning. “Go tell them, Beppo! Haste!” “Tell them?” I cried. “The pilgrims? Ah, no, no--not unless the miracle has come to pass!” “There are no pilgrims here, my son,” said the priest. “Not?” I cried, and cold horror descended upon me. “But they should have come. This is Holy Friday, father.” “Nay, my son, Holy Friday was a fortnight ago.” I stared askance at him, in utter silence. Then I smiled half tolerantly. “But father, yesterday they were all here. Yesterday was...” “Your yesterday, my son, is sped these fifteen days,” he answered. “All that long while, since the night you wrestled with the Devil, you have lain exhausted by that awful combat, lying there betwixt life and death. All that time we have watched by you, Leocadia here and I and the lad Beppo.” Now here was news that left me speechless for some little while. My amazement and slow understanding were spurred on by a sight of my hands lying on the rude coverlet which had been flung over me. Emaciated they had been for some months now. But at present they were as white as snow and almost as translucent in their extraordinary frailty. I became increasingly conscious, too, of the great weakness of my body and the great lassitude that filled me. “Have I had the fever?” I asked him presently. “Ay, my son. And who would not? Blessed Virgin! who would not after what you underwent?” And now he poured into my astonished ears the amazing story that had overrun the country-side. It would seem that my cry in the night, my exultant cry to Satan that I had defeated him, had been overheard by a goatherd who guarded his flock in the hills. In the stillness he distinctly heard the words that I had uttered, and he came trembling down, drawn by a sort of pious curiosity to the spot whence it had seemed to him that the cry had proceeded.