They were both tall men, and they stood with their cowls over their tonsures, in the conventual attitude, their hands tucked away into the ample sleeves of their brown habits. One of this twain was broader than his companion and very erect of carriage, such as was unusual in a monk. His mouth and the half of his face were covered by a thick brown beard, and athwart his countenance, from under the left eye across his nose and cheek, ran a great livid scar to lose itself in the beard towards the right jaw. His deep-set eyes regarded me so intently that I coloured uncomfortably under their gaze; for accustomed as I was to seclusion, I was easily abashed. I turned away and went slowly along the gallery to the end; and yet I had a feeling that those eyes were following me, and, indeed, casting a swift glance over my shoulder ere I went indoors, I saw that this was so. That evening at supper I chanced to mention the matter to Fra Gervasio. “There was a big bearded capuchin in the yard at alms-time to-day--” I was beginning, when the friar's knife clattered from his hand, and he looked at me with eyes of positive fear out of a face from which the last drop of blood had abruptly receded. I checked my inquiry at the sight of him thus suddenly disordered, whilst my mother, who, as usual, observed nothing, made a foolish comment. “The little brothers are never absent, Agostino.” “This brother was a big brother,” said I. “It is not seemly to make jest of holy men,” she reproved me in her chilling voice. “I had no thought to jest,” I answered soberly. “I should never have remarked this friar but that he gazed upon me with so great an intentness--so great that I was unable to bear it.” It was her turn to betray emotion. She looked at me full and long--for once--and very searchingly. She, too, had grown paler than was her habit. “Agostino, what do you tell me?” quoth she, and her voice quivered. Now here was a deal of pother about a capuchin who had stared at the Madonnino of Anguissola! The matter was out of all proportion to the stir it made, and I conveyed in my next words some notion of that opinion. But she stared wistfully. “Never think it, Agostino,” she besought me. “You know not what it may import.” And then she turned to Fra Gervasio. “Who was this mendicant?” she asked. He had by now recovered from his erstwhile confusion. But he was still pale, and I observed that his hand trembled. “He must have been one of the two little brothers of St. Francis on their way, they said, from Milan to Loreto on a pilgrimage.” “Not those you told me are resting here until to-morrow?” From his face I saw that he would have denied it had it lain within his power to utter a deliberate falsehood. “They are the same,” he answered in a low voice. She rose. “I must see this friar,” she announced, and never in all my life had I beheld in her such a display of emotion.