The morning was wonderfully bright and sunny, and through the transparent thinness of the air the most distant peaks shone clearly, with their soft colors and delicate tracery of snow. The festa began early with the ringing of bells and the firing of musketry. Long files of peasantry came down in troops along the narrow tracks leading from the valley to the mountains. Margaret and Dorothy hurried over their coffee and rolls to hasten down to the church. But it was already full, and hundreds of women and children were kneeling outside the western door, and a similar crowd of men outside the northern door. Some women sitting on a bench offered a seat to Margaret, whose beautiful face was lit up with an expression of sympathy with their devotion. The women, like the men, were praying with their hats in their hands, bareheaded under a burning sun. Margaret shared a prayer book with the peasant woman beside her, and read the prayers and meditations in Italian; while here and there the woman marked with her thumb some special words, and looked up into her face to see if she was "sympatica"; and she and her companions smiled as they saw Margaret's lips move with the uttering of the same prayers they were themselves repeating.
Presently, amid the ringing of the bells and to the music of a brass band, a procession was formed, and all the congregation thronged out of the church, and those who had been praying without fell into their places—men, and women, and children. There were altars erected in the streets, at which mass was to be celebrated; and the long procession filed away with many banners fluttering along it. Last of all, and at a little distance from the rest, there came a man whom Margaret had already noticed as standing aloof, half hidden behind a corner of a wall. He was an uncouth creature, tall and ungainly, with uncut, matted hair, and a coarse beard; yet there was something in his whole appearance that reminded her of somebody she knew.
"Why!" exclaimed Dorothy in accents of surprise. "Look! look! How like that poor fellow is to Andrew Goldsmith!"
Yes, that was it. This awkward Tyrolean peasant, who hardly knew how to use his great limbs, was like Andrew—oddly like him; he might have been Andrew's own son. She smiled at the oddity of such a resemblance; but apart from this, the man's solitariness and aloofness interested her greatly. She turned to the old woman beside her, who was sitting still, waiting for the procession to accomplish part of its route before she joined it.
"Who is that poor man?" she inquired.
"He is English," replied the woman, "an Englishman who was born here in the very hotel itself where the signora is staying. Will she wish to hear all the circumstances? Because I know; I was a servant there when Martino was born."
"Is his name Martino?" asked Margaret.
"Yes, signora," she went on eagerly; "I will tell the English lady. It is nearly thirty years ago, a little later than this festa. An English signore and signora came to the hotel, and the name written in the register by the signore was Martino. So when the child was born he was named Martin; and Saint Martin is his patron, but the saint has done nothing for him, because his parents were heretics, and not Christians."
"Martin!" repeated Margaret, with growing interest; "but what became of the parents?"
"The little mother died, poor soul, in giving him birth," said the old woman, "and lies buried yonder in the cemetery, and Chiara took the boy for her own. Chiara was the head servant in the hotel, and folks say she made money by it in some way; but there was not much money in the signora's trunks—only enough to bury her; or if there was money, it never did Chiara any good, poor soul! They say she lies dying this morning up yonder in a hut on the hills, and all she will hear of the festa is the ringing of the bells and the firing of the cannon. She's no older than I am; and you behold me!"