"There's no use talking, child," said Elsie. "I'm older than you, and have seen more of real men and women; and whatever they did in old times, I know that nowadays the saints don't help those that don't take care of themselves; and the long and the short of it is, we must ride across those marshes, and get out of them as quick as possible, or we shall get into Paradise quicker than we want to."
In common with many other professing Christians, Elsie felt that going to Paradise was the very dismallest of alternatives,--a thing to be staved off as long as possible.
After many days of journeying, the travellers, somewhat weary and foot-sore, found themselves in a sombre and lonely dell of the mountains, about an hour before the going down of the sun. The slanting yellow beams turned to silvery brightness the ashy foliage of the gnarled old olives, which gaunt and weird clung with their great, knotty, straggling roots to the rocky mountain-sides. Before them, the path, stony, steep, and winding, was rising upward and still upward, and no shelter for the night appeared, except in a distant mountaintown, which, perched airily as an eagle's nest on its hazy height, reflected from the dome of its church and its half-ruined old feudal tower, the golden light of sunset. A drowsy-toned bell was ringing out the Ave Maria over the wide purple solitude of mountains, whose varying outlines were rising around.
"You are tired, my little heart," said old Elsie to Agnes, who had drooped during a longer walk than usual.
"No, grandmamma," said Agnes, sinking on her knees to repeat her evening prayer, which she did, covering her face with her hands.
Old Elsie kneeled too; but, as she was praying,--being a thrifty old body in the use of her time,--she cast an eye up the steep mountain-path and calculated the distance of the little airy village. Just at that moment she saw two or three horsemen, who appeared to be stealthily observing them from behind the shadow of some large rocks.
When their devotions were finished, she hurried on her grandchild, saying,--
"Come, dearie! it must be we shall find a shelter soon."
"Good evening, mother!" said one of them, speaking from under the shadow of a deeply slouched hat.