“Stumbling and halting at every step, for the night was falling rapidly and progress rendered difficult by boulders and watercourses, I at length made my way past the obstruction through a fissure at the side, and found to my delight that the subject of my picture lay before me. What it was you have seen to-day.
“Cheered by my good fortune, for the wind was rising rapidly, and there was every suggestion of an autumn gale, I made for one of the larger cottages that faced me. I had chosen well, as the event proved, for I found it to be the residence of the village priest—a kindly and refined old man—who met me at the door with outstretched hands, and with a welcome that in England we accord only to long-established friends.
“‘You are welcome, my son, most welcome,’ he began. ‘Few visitors reach me in this Val Verde—for so I have christened it, not very appropriately, I fear, but in memory of my home in Spain—and when they do come we keep them, be assured, for as long as they will stay. But now let me show you my guest-chamber. Poor as it is, it is better than would have fallen to your lot if you had missed the entrance to our valley. And in an hour Annetta will be ready with our evening meal, and afterwards we will sit and talk over a flask of Chianti till late into the night. Or rather, you shall talk and I will listen, for news of the outer world is the payment we exact from our visitors for such welcome as we can give them.’
“Annetta was still busy with her preparations when I rejoined him in the little sitting-room, so comfortable in its contrast with the world outside, where a hurricane raged and roared through the ravines that fell away from either side of the house.
“I went to the window and looked out at the tiny lights blinking from the cottages like glow-worms that had lost their confidence. And right on the top of the grim rock facing me gleamed the red light from the church that crowned its summit.
“‘The story of a terrible tragedy attaches to that lamp,’ said my host, who had come forward to join me. And his words, by a strange coincidence, came almost as an answer to my thought. ‘When we settle down,’ he added, ‘for our evening chat, my contribution to our entertainment shall be the story of the tragedy that it commemorates. Meanwhile, as Annetta is behindhand with her preparations, and will not serve us yet awhile, do you feel bold enough to climb that hill with me in face of the storm, and see for yourself what my church contains? It can boast, at any rate, of one good picture, which, by the way, you ought to study before you hear the story I have promised you, and with which it is connected.’
“‘With pleasure,’ was my reply, ‘though surely it is hardly fair to judge a picture on a night like this, and by what looks like the glimmer of one feeble lamp. It would be difficult, I imagine, to devise worse conditions for appreciating an artist’s work.’
“‘As a rule, no doubt. But remember that pictures, like music, may be composed to suit certain accompaniments; and this is one of them, as I think you will admit, if you are content to take my words on trust and brave the storm in faith of them.’
“Lantern in hand, the old man sallied forth, and I followed him. The distance was not so great as I had anticipated, nor the wind so overpowering. The church was really nearer than I had judged it to be in the twilight of the approaching night, and the precipice up which our pathway lay acted as a barrier to the wind, which had gathered in the moorland beyond, and, parted into two currents, swept the defiles on either side of us.
“On entering the church I saw at once that the main building was in darkness, save for the glimmering flame before the sanctuary. But from a side chapel that opened on the choir streamed another and fuller radiance, which had been concentrated by a careful adjustment on the picture I had come to study.