"Where is she?"
"Who, my son?"
"Who? A woman—or an angel—who has been with me always."
"None have been with you, my son, save myself and those of my Order."
He made a faint intolerant sign of dissent; and his eyes wandered over the place where he lay, in weary search, missing in consciousness and in reality the face which had been ever before him in delirium.
"Where am I, then?"
"In our convent at Monastica. You were found all but lifeless in the forest by two peasants, who brought you hither. You have been in sore peril, my son, but, by the blessing of the most holy Mother of God, we have wrought your cure. But keep silence, and rest now, yon are very weak,"
"Weak?—I?"
He repeated the word in marvelling incredulity; he who had stood face to face with the lion in the sultry African night, and measured his strength with the desert king's, and prevailed,—he who from his childish years upward, through a long, and daring, and adventurous life, had never known his force to fail, his power to desert him,—was unable to
