When the vines were stripped of their clusters, and the ploughed fields stood bare and brown in the autumnal sun--when the fig trees lost their leaves, and their white branches took on that peculiarly gaunt appearance which characterises them as soon as the wintry winds begin to blow--a solitary traveller plodded wearily across the Lombardy plains, asking, as he went, for the road that would lead him to the village and monastery of San Stefano. He arrived at his destination on an evening late in November. It was between five and six o'clock when he came to the little, white village, nestling in a cleft of the hills, with the monastery on a slope behind it. There was a background of mountainous country--green, and grey, and purple--with solemn, white heights behind, stretching far into the crystal clearness of the sky. As the traveller reached the village he looked up to those white forms, and saw them transfigured in the evening light. The sky behind them changed to rose colour, to purple, violet, even to delicate pale green and golden, and, when the daylight had faded, an afterglow tinged the snowy summit with a roseate flush more tenderly ethereal than the tint of an oleander blossom, as transient as a gleam of April sunshine, or the changing light upon a summer sea. Then a dead whiteness succeeded; the day was gone, and, quick as lightning, the stars began to quiver in the blueness of the sky. The lights in the cottage windows gleamed not inhospitably, but the traveller passed them by. His errand was to the monastery of San Stefano, for there he fancied that he should find a friend. He had no reason to feel sure about it, but he was in a mental region where reason had little sway. He was governed by vague impulses and instincts which he did not care to controvert. He was faint, footsore, and weary, but he would not pause until he had reached the monastery gates. He rang the bell with a trembling hand. Its clangour startled him, and nearly made him fly from the place. If he had been less weak at that moment he would have turned away; as it was, he leaned against the high, white wall with an intolerable sense of discomfort and fatigue. When the porter came and looked out, it took him several minutes to discern, through the gathering darkness, the worn figure in waiting beside the gate. "I have come a long distance," stammered the traveller, in answer to the porter's exclamation. "I want rest and food. I was told by one of you--one who was called Brother Dino, I believe--that you gave hospitality to travellers----" "Come in, amico," said the porter, genially. "No explanations are needed when one comes to San Stefano. So you know our Brother Dino, do you? He is here again now, after two or three years in Paris. A fine scholar, they say, and a credit to the monastery. Come to the guest-room and I will tell him that you are here."