The pretty girl's look followed his gesture. She shaded her eyes with her hand, and a rosy smile rested on her delicately cut mouth.
"Oh, yes," she said, half aloud, to herself, "it may well be cool and pleasant there."
Then she heard her brother's voice.
"I am coming," she cried; and, hastily turning to Nino, "shall I see you this evening at the usual hour?"
"Yes, if you will promise to come out here with me."
"Yes, yes," she cried, hastily, and ran away toward the others, who were descending the hill. Nino stroked his slender moustache, and a mocking little smile shot from his eyes after the pretty girl who had so thoughtlessly thrown him this momentous promise.
When Padre Atanasio found himself alone by the chapel under the olive trees he walked with much deliberation to the edge of the cliff and looked over; a most peculiar, condoling, bantering smile hovered on his lips, as his glance fell on the rope, and glided down to the place where it plunged into the sea. Down there, several feet deep under water, dashed over by the foaming waves, floated something heavy, that looked like a human body--a helpless lump, which the waves tossed hither and thither, and across which the fish, like silver arrows, shot back and forth in lightning darts. Occasionally the thing would bounce against a rock, roll back on itself, and then resume its regular motion in the water. If the dashing of the waves ceased for a little, and a sunbeam fell upon the clear flood, one could have sworn that a corpse was floating there--the corpse of an old man with snow-white hair and beard, in a faded red-brown mantle; the rope was knotted strongly around his hips, and his arms were closely bound by it also. He lay there, the poor old man, stretched out stiffly, and let the waves drive him, and Padre Atanasio looked down at him so queerly, and queer sounded the words which the holy man threw him over his shoulder at parting:
"Serves you rights Evoluccio! What? You wanted to keep up a sinful competition with the blessed Mother of God? You must have the finest presents, the handsomest wax candles, the gayest festivals! And what is there so extraordinary about you, then? You're nothing but a half-converted old heathen!"
But the poor old man with the snow-white beard and hair, and the red-brown mantle, over whom the jolly fishes were swimming, was not a murderer's victim; he was not even a corpse; he was not even a poor old man. He was nothing more nor less than the especial patron saint of the little town and surrounding country. Holy Saint Pancras of Evolo--the Evolino, as the people were accustomed, after their familiar fashion, to call him for short--the Evoluccio, as they injuriously named him when his conduct didn't please them.
The good saint might well have wondered what had happened to him on that fine spring morning, when the entire population of Roccastretta broke into his sanctuary on the Promontory of Evolo, tore him from his pedestal, carried him out from the cool twilight of his chapel into the glaring day, tied a rope around his body, dragged him, amid the most intolerable cursing and abuse, to the edge of the rocks, and pitched him over, like a dead cat, into the sea.