His eyes sparkled--his cheeks
flushed,--and he looked eagerly up into the face of his priestly
hypnotizer.
"Yes--yes!" he said quickly in a breathless whisper--"But how?--tell
me how! I will work--oh, I will work--for Rome, for God, for the
Blessed Virgin!--I will do all that I can!--but how--how? Will the
Holy Father send an angel to take me out of this prison, so that I may
be free to help God?"
Del Fortis surveyed him with a kind of grim derision, A slight noise
like the slipping-back or slipping-to of a grating, startled him, and
he looked about him on all sides, moved by a sudden nervous
apprehension. But the massive walls of the cell, oozing with damp and
slime, had apparently no aperture or outlet anywhere, not even a slit
in the masonry for the admission of daylight. Satisfied with his hasty
examination, he took his credulous victim by the arm, and led him back
to the rough stone bench where they had first begun to converse.
"Kneel down here before me!"--he said--"Kneel, as if you were repeating
all the sins of your life to me in your last confession! Kneel, I say!"
Feebly, and with trembling limbs, the lad obeyed.
"Now," continued Del Fortis, holding up the crucifix before him--"Try
to follow my words and understand them! To-morrow, or the next day, you
will be taken before a judge and tried for your attempted crime.
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