With the first glint of dawn I heard steps outside the hut; but I did not
stir. By sunrise there was a murmur of voices like the muttering of a sea
upon its shore. I rose and peered more closely at the saint. He was just
wood, inanimate and insensible, and there was still no sign. Outside, I
knew, a crowd of pilgrims was already gathered. They were waiting, poor
souls. But what was their waiting compared with mine?
Another hour I knelt there, still beseeching Heaven to take mercy upon me.
But Heaven remained unresponsive and the wounds of the image continued dry.
I rose, at last, in a sort of despair, and going to the door of the hut, I
flung it wide.
The platform was filled with a great crowd of peasantry, and an overflow
poured down the sides of it and surged up the hill on the right and the
left. At sight of me, so gaunt and worn, my eyes wild with despair and
feverish from sleeplessness, a tangled growth of beard upon my hollow
cheeks, they uttered as with one voice a great cry of awe. The multitude
swayed and rippled, and then with a curious sound as that of a great wind,
all went down upon their knees before me--all save the array of cripples
huddled in the foreground, brought thither, poor wretches, in the hope of a
miraculous healing.
As I was looking round upon that assembly, my eyes were caught by a flash
and glitter on the road above us leading to the Cisa Pass.
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