With bowed heads and measured pace the monks advanced, seeming in their grey robes silvered by the moonlight more like ghostly figures in a dream than living beings in a real world. Those at the head of the procession were carrying a bier upon which lay something covered with a cassock. "A strange hour for a burial," said my uncle, "if burial it be. Or are they carrying to the town some dead body they have discovered among the mountains?" "O papa!" cried Daphne, clutching her father's arm, and speaking in a broken voice, "can he have committed suicide?" "Who?" "Angelo! I remember his wild look when he left me. Oh, if it should be----" "No, no, you are frightening yourself without reason," said her father in a reassuring tone. "It is not Angelo. Can you not see? It is one of their own order whom they are mourning. They would not make such a lament over mere secular clay, I warrant you. Stay here, and Frank and I will ascertain who it is. You do not mind being left alone for a minute or two? No harm can happen to you. We will not be long. Come, Frank." And my uncle and I descended hastily to the road. As this is a faithful autobiography I must not shrink from recording my thoughts at this time. Full of my selfish love for Daphne, I was hoping that the dead form carried by the monks might be--George. A wicked wish, and one that I was ashamed of the minute after I had entertained it. The monks had ceased their singing for a brief space, but as they neared us a fresh outburst of mournful harmony rose from them. It spread through the vale around, and, rolling onward, echoed and re-echoed from many a distant cliff, and, as if refused a lodgment there, mounted upward to the midnight sky: "DIES IRÆ, DIES ILLA, SOLVET SÆCULUM IN FAVILLA." The deep cowl that veiled the head of each grey brother gave a singular appearance to the throng, and the peculiarly wild effect of their harmony was heightened by the solemn hour and the moonlight. "What ghostly looking figures!" I muttered to my uncle. "Ay! Charon multiplied by forty. How I hate these doleful Gregorians! Let us stop these sandalled friars, and ask--if indeed they will be so condescending as to tell us--who it is that has received his _Nunc Dimittis_." As the train came abreast of us, my uncle stepped forward and lifted his hat to the monks, who at once stopped both their march and their requiem. "Pardon the curiosity of a stranger," he said, addressing the leading brother: "may we ask the reason of this midnight procession?" The monk regarded the questioner with a look that seemed to ask what business it was of his; but, verbally courteous, he replied: "_Pax vobiscum, mi fili._ We mourn one who but a few hours ago was alive. Now--_sic est voluntas divina_--he is no more." "How came he by his death?"