The annual drawing for the conscription was over at Palazzuole, and the forty dark-browed lads on whom the lot had fallen were dispersing by companies to their homes in the neighboring mountain villages. To each of these young dwellers in the Apennines the result of their recent dip into the urn of Fate signified entrance upon a life more or less distasteful, involving probable expatriation to regions where wasting malarial fevers and darkskinned foes given to murdering prisoners and wounded in cold blood were believed to count among the commonplaces of the Italian soldier's existence. To some of them it meant even more, suggesting vividly the ruin of poor homes sustained hitherto by the labor of their hands, a vision of paternal fields abandoned to neglect, of mothers and sisters reduced to the extremity of penury which in Italy finds even the peasant's coarse bread too costly, and is fain to keep itself alive upon chestnuts. Yet all alike assumed an air of defiant cheerfulness, and the boy whose departure on the morrow to his garrison town must leave a crippled father without a hand to prune the family vines, or a troop of little half-clad brothers a prey to semi-starvation, sang and shouted as loudly as the rest.

Thus Andrea Baldi, of Castel San Martino, was all jests and smiles so long as his half-dozen comrades in misfortune were by, but no sooner had these parted company from him, leaving him to make his way along the rough mule track which led to his solitary home while they pursued their way to the village, a quarter of a mile farther on, than his young face let fall the mask of gaiety. He looked up at the confused mass of white houses huddled against the brow of the hill above

him, and down across the valley below -a typical valley of the Apennines, with a swift turbulent river babbling and foaming through its dark green depths, and great forest-clothed spurs, their purple gloom dashed here and there with a white fleck of waterfall, overshadowing it on every side, themselves overshadowed by frowning peaks still capped with snow (for the month was early April and spring comes late to the Tuscan Highlands); and his wandering eyes, coming back to rest on the sunny hillside ledge between the two, where his mother's pink-walled cottage basked among flowering vines, grew dark with sorrowful prevision. Already he seemed to see the neat vineyard overrun with weeds and the roof of the homestead crumbling into decay. Even for a grown man it was no easy matter to wring a living out of this strip of rocky soil. And his next brother, Pietro-the widow's best aid henceforward-was but twelve years old!

Andrea said some bitter things about the conscription, under his breath, as he clambered slowly downwards tow. ards the little pink house. He was in no haste to reach it and kill his mother's last hope-the hope that he might have drawn a "lucky number."

But watch was being kept for him. Before his hand touched the door it was flung open from within, and a woman stood on the threshold--a woman of forty, who looked sixty, wrinkled and sharp-featured, with an agonized question in her sunken dark eyes.

"It is so, my son?"

"Già, my mother, it is so. Courage! It was to be. And the years will soon pass-"

Antonia Baldi interrupted wildly:

Andrea contemplated his mother with a troubled expression. Clearly she was beside herself.

"Cara mia madre," he said soothingly, "I think you hardly know what a substitute costs."

Antonia broke into an hysterical laugh. “Do I not? Who should know better than I, seeing-but I will show thee, unbelieving boy!"

She hurried away into the inner room, coming back, after a moment, with a coarse blue knitted stocking in her hand and a glow of triumph on her worn face.

"I do not know, eh? See here!"

With trembling fingers she dragged out the contents of the stocking, heaping them on the battered table between her and her son. Andrea started in astonishment at the heap, in which a few coins, silver and bronze, mingled with notes of every size and degree of greasiness: notes for one lira, for five lire, for twenty, for fifty.

"But how?" he stammered.

It appeared that Antonia had been engaged for years in amassing this hoard against the present evil day. She had given Signor Piave of Palazzuole a mortgage on the vineyard-oh, Andrea need not make wry faces; he could pay that off in a few years by hiring himself out during harvest and vintage!— she had sold her jewellery-"the necklace and earrings were good weight of gold, thou knowest; besides, they had been in our family nigh on a hundred and fifty years, and it seems that the older nowadays the better." Then she

had been very careful with the household expenses.

"Which means that you have starved yourself. I understand now, blind dolt that I have been!" Andrea cried, gazing at that emaciated figure before him through a mist of tears which did no dishonor to his manhood.

"What matter, carino, so long as I keep thee? Thou wilt go to Giambattista Crestola to-night."

Andrea hesitated. To ask Giambattista Crestola, of all men in San Martino, to be his substitute. No! that he could not do! And yet since Giambattista alone was of the right age? His wavering glance travelled from the little heap on the table to his mother's quivering features and imploring eyes; he set his teeth hard. "I'll go," he muttered, and went without another word.

Antonia awaited his return with perfect confidence. When he came back (secretly half relieved) to report his mission a failure-Giambattista, having lost two cousins by fever in Erythrea during the past two years, was not to be tempted even by Andrea's pile of greasy notes-she was at first incredulous of having heard him aright. Then she fell into a passion of despair, hurling reproaches at his head. If he had put the matter properly before Giambattista, Giambattista would certainly have consented. Was he not as poor as a rat? Did not the whole Crestola family go barefoot, and live upon chestnuts and bilberries? No, the thing was clear! Andrea wished to leave her and the children, did not care to buy his exemption, therefore he had deliberately discouraged the one man who might do so from taking his place!

Andrea met these accusations with outward patience, but inwardly his soul rose in revolt. Was it not enough that he had humiliated himself to the dust for his mother's sake, but she must assail him with insulting suspicions? The moment came when he could endure

her frenzied reproaches no longer, and flung out of the house and down the path into the valley, muttering that this world was altogether an abode of darkness, and he the most miserable man in it.

However, as he left the hill-track, rough with rolling stones, to cross the stretch of meadow-land on which the goats and shaggy black cattle of San Martino were peacefully grazing, he caught sight of Caterina Serchi not a hundred yards ahead; and suddenly the world became a place of light again, and his own prospects not quite intolerable after all.

He made haste to overtake the slim figure in crimson petticoat and white bodice, panting out "Caterina!" as he ran. Caterina did not pause, nor turn her graceful dark head. She was an extremely dignified young person, who considered that her own position and her father's-was not she the acknowledged beauty of San Martino, and he the landlord of the Spada d'oro and the richest man in the village?-demanded from her a certain haughtiness of carriage. When Andrea reached her side, the tone in which she addressed him would have befitted an affable princess. "Oh, is it you, Andrea Baldi? Good evening. Did you find it hot on the road to-day?"

Cater

"Yes-no-I don't remember. ina, I'm drawn for the army." Caterina walked on, looking straight in front of her. "That's unfortunatesince you dislike the idea of serving so much."

The blood sprang to Andrea's face. "What do you mean?" he demanded huskily.

"Well, seeing that you only drew the number this morning, and that you've already invited another man to go in your place "

"He is not going," Andrea interposed. Caterina waved her hand. "So I have heard. I wonder that he should refuse;

surely to be a soldier is better than spending all one's life grubbing among vine-roots!" ("This comes of that sergeant of Bersaglieri dancing three times with her at the festa in Sant' Elena," thought poor Andrea to himself.) "Yes, I wonder at Giambattista; but I wonder still more at you, Andrea Baldi! I shouldn't have fancied"-in a significant tone-"that you'd care to ask a favor of Giambattista Crestola." Andrea's color deepened. He knew

what Caterina's tone meant. She was thinking of that unlucky occasion when, as a boy of fourteen, he had fought Giambattista Crestola on her behalf-and been beaten. Caterina had had no great opinion of his personal valor ever since, he believed. It was nothing to her that Giambattista at that time had been taller than he by half a head, and heavier by nearly a stone; girls take small account of such trifling disadvantages. Clenching his hands, Andrea inquired:

"Cannot you guess why I brought myself to ask it?"

"No," with a pitiless shrug of her shoulders. "Unless, indeed, you are afraid to go."

Upon this Andrea's passion burst bonds. She might despise his love if she pleased; she had no right to call him coward. Would she have him break his mother's heart? throw back into his mother's face the hard-earned savings of years? He was as brave as any Giambattista of them all, and so he would show her and show the world, once he was in Africa with a rifle in his hand.

"Do-do-" Caterina made a desperate attempt to laugh, and broke into a flood of tears-"do you suppose I wish to think that of you?"

If Andrea had been five-and-twenty he would doubtless have known how to take advantage of this surprising loss of self-control on Caterina's part, but he was only nineteen, a simple boy,

to whom the village innkeeper's daughter appeared a compound of queen and angel. So he contented himself with kissing her sleeve furtively, as she leaned sobbing against a friendly boulder by the wayside, whispering at the same time: "If I should win the cross out there, Caterina, could you-would you-love me a little?"

This ill-judged humility had the effect of stanching Caterina's tears. In a twinkling she was looking round upon Andrea with her most provoking air.

"How can I tell what I might do in such an extremely improbable case? I do not think you stand in much danger of winning crosses, Andrea; you are far too prudent."

A cruel speech; and next day, when Andrea and his fellow conscripts, their wide hats gay with long streamers of ribbon of many colors, had marched away down the mountain-road, it would seem that Caterina repented it; for, on Carlotta Casale, the baker's daughter, remarking innnocently, "Andrea Baldi is one who does not take kindly to soldiering; didst notice how glum he looked?" Caterina turned upon her fiercely: "Well-and if he did? Hasn't he just said farewell to his mother, heart-of-stone? There's no braver lad in all Tuscany than Andrea Baldi! I don't care who the other may be!" With this defiant sentence Caterina walked away, and presently disappeared into the little dark church at the top of the market-place-"to say prayers for Andrea's safe retu, I'll be bound!" Carlotta Casale whisperedand was seen no more that day.

But of this significant outbreak on the part of his love poor Andrea knew nothing. And it was a sorely wounded heart he carried down to Palazzuole.

larly once a fortnight. Then the regiment sailed for Africa, and the ill-spelt letters came more rarely-until, one day, they ceased altogether. Andrea had exchanged into another regiment stationed in the interior, and was gone into the desert "to fight the blacks."

Hard upon the news of this spirited proceeding of Andrea's came other news-news of a disaster before which Italy (even remote rural Italy of the Apennine fastnesses) bowed her face in shame and hid it for sorrow. There had been a great battle in Africa and "the blacks" had won it. And there was mourning in the villages round Palazzuole.

Alone, of all these villages, San Martino held its head erect in comparative cheerfulness, for three of its sons were safe in a regiment that had not been engaged at Adowa, and of the fourth the little community found reason to be proud. Was not the name of Andrea Baldi, of the 165th-who, when the Abyssinians were pressing hard upon the ill-fated Italians, first rescued his wounded Adjutant from under the very spears of the enemy single-handed, and then rallied half a dozen panic-stricken privates to the successful defence of the regimental colors-written in every journal of the Peninsula from the Corriere della Sera to the Gazzetta di Napoli? Were not his brave deeds the nightly theme of conversation in every mountain inn for twenty miles round? San Martino, with a hero all to herself, found it impossible to feel altogether downcast. Casale the baker-who was village mayor as well-vowed the brave boy should have a right royal welcome home, and dropped hints of a triumphal arch, which were promptly reported by his daughter to Caterina Serchi. Caterina affected to laugh at the notion, but the satisfaction it afforded her was none the less apparent.

The warm-hearted Casale had plenty of time in which to elaborate his plans,

for the story of Adowa was fully a year old before Andrea Baldi saw his native village again. And when he alighted at the Palazzuole Station, a thin, bronzed man not easily to be identified with the smooth-cheeked lad who had left it three years before, it was certainly not with the air of a conscious hero. His bent head and dragging step as he toiled up the steep way to San Martino argued a mood rather dejected than self-complacent.

Gait and carriage expressed the young man's mind truly. He had won no cross, done nothing to prove his courage before the world and Caterina -Caterina, still, after a thousand new and strange experiences, queen of his faithful fancy. All the greetings he received by the way failed to lighten the depression of his spirits. Yet these were many and cordial; he found himself wondering stupidly why people should seem so pleased to see him back.

Still wondering, he passed under the old village gateway (having had no tidings of his mother for several months, he felt afraid to go straight to the cottage), and was sorely bewildered by the shout which, on his appearance, broke from the loungers in the market-place. "Great heavens! it is-yes, it is Andrea Baldi! It is himself! Giacomo, Carlo, Giuseppe, he is here! Run, boy, and tell the mayor Andrea Baldi has

come."

In five minutes the whole village was gathering about the returned soldier, welcoming, congratulating, men grasping him by the hand, women weeping for sheer excitement, stout Casale himself hurrying up to say, "Ah, you were not expected so soon! We had made our preparations to receive you to-morrow."

"Didn't you see the laurels on the gateway?" a child's shrill voice demanded.

"As it is, I think"-the mayor turned in perplexity to his audience-"we

might still present the address-on Sunday, perhaps?"

"Certainly, certainly!" cried the village in chorus.

"We are all proud of you," Casale explained.

Andrea had an air of perplexity. "You are very kind," he murmured. "I don't quite understand, but I daresay --presently-" He looked round him, manifestly desirous to escape.

"Like a good son, you are eager to visit your mother, I perceive," Casale said benevolently. "We will not detain you from her. You will find her well and prosperous; last winter was a hard one for a lonely woman, but trust us! we have not let the mother of our hero want for anything."

"No, trust us!" Jacopo Serchi the innkeeper echoed. Then he added with a roguish smile, "You will find my daughter at the cottage, I think."

Caterina at the cottage with his mother? And Serchi's smile-what did it all mean? "I must be going mad," thought Andrea, stumbling down the well-known path.

Then he knocked at the door, and all in a moment-he never knew how it happened-Caterina was in his arms and his mother clinging to his shoulder. And for ten minutes he lived in a golden dream of happiness.

At the end of that time, holding still a hand of each of the two women in his, the dream vanished. He stood face to face with the great temptation of his life.

It was on Thursday that he returned home. Two days lay between him and the Sunday which was to witness San Martino's expression of pride in her hero. Andrea spent them chiefly with Caterina, but he did not seem to find much satisfaction in her society. morose and moody was he that the poor girl feared she had been over-hasty in taking his continued devotion for granted. Surely he must have ceased

So