"By falling from the cliff on which our monastery is built. The holy Virgin--_gloria tibi, O sancta Maria_--foreshadowed the event this morning by the fall of her image in the chapel." "Ah, the days of Urim and Thummim are not past, then," remarked my uncle, with a tinge of irony in his tone unnoticed by him to whom he spoke. "Is the dead man a brother of your order?" "An old inhabitant of Rivoli, but a neophyte of two days only. It was but yesterday that the good Father Ignatius brought him to us, bidding us receive him as a novice. This evening at vespers he quitted the convent unknown to us. He did not return. At nocturns Brother Francis startled us by rushing in and saying that he had heard groans coming from the foot of the cliff. We descended to the spot. This is what we found." With these words the speaker drew back the covering from the bier. And there, calm and still in death, with glazed eyes staring up at the sky, as if in reproach of the cold, silent moon that had seen him die, was the face of the silver-haired old man, the penitent of Father Ignatius. My sudden exclamation of surprise drew all eyes upon me. "Did you know him, young sir?" "I have seen him once in England, and once here in the cathedral yesterday. I know nothing of him, not even his name. Where are you taking the body?" I added after a moment's interval. "To the house of Father Ignatius," replied the leading monk, as he motioned the _cortège_ to proceed. "Stop!" cried my uncle, and at his imperative voice the monks paused. For some moments he had been closely scrutinising the corpse, and now, pointing to it with a stern look, he said: "There must be an inquiry on the body, for this man did not die by accident. He was pushed over the cliff. See! these marks on the throat were made by a strong hand. He has been murdered." "MURDERED!" repeated forty voices. The bier was hastily set down. The bright torches were lowered to the level of the dead man's face and, making the sign of the cross, the monks crowded around to look. "_O sancta Maria, ora pro nobis!_" The dark purple bruises on the throat, and the frayed condition of the clothing round it, were proofs too strong to be confuted, of my uncle's statement. "These marks may have arisen from some other cause than the one you suggest," remarked the leading monk in tones sweetly supercilious. He seemed annoyed, probably because my uncle had discovered what his monkish dulness had overlooked. The fingers of the dead man's right hand were tightly clenched. My uncle proceeded to force them open, and as he did so there fell to the ground something which when picked up proved to be a grey cloth button adhering to a fragment of grey cloth, and assuredly not belonging to the garments of the dead man. "This," said my uncle, "has been torn by the dead man from the clothes of him who hurled him over. There was evidently a struggle. This button must not be lost. It may be a means of tracing the assassin."