When all was over she took the brown blanket as payment without asking for it, smuggling it out of the mean room under her great black handkerchief.

But it was day then, and Don Pietro Casale was wide awake.

He stopped her in the narrow part of the lane at the foot of his own staircase, and forcibly undid the bundle, to the old woman's inexpressible discomfiture.

He said nothing, as he took it from her and carried it away, but his thin grey lips smiled quietly.

The old woman shook her fist at him behind his back and cursed his dead under her breath.