Rowland followed the winding, climbing lanes; lingered, as he got higher, beneath the rusty cypresses, beside the low parapets, where you look down on the charming city and sweep the vale of the Arno; reached the little square before the cathedral, and rested awhile in the massive, dusky church; then climbed higher, to the Franciscan convent which is poised on the very apex of the mountain.

He rang at the little gateway; a shabby, senile, red-faced brother admitted him with almost maudlin friendliness.

There was a dreary chill in the chapel and the corridors, and he passed rapidly through them into the delightfully steep and tangled old garden which runs wild over the forehead of the great hill.

He had been in it before, and he was very fond of it.

The garden hangs in the air, and you ramble from terrace to terrace and wonder how it keeps from slipping down, in full consummation of its bereaved forlornness, into the nakedly romantic gorge beneath.