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I do not know whether the accident to Jeremy Taylor had made Godfather Gilpin too anxious about his books to sleep, but I found that he was keeping awake, and after a bit he said to me, “What are you staring so hard and so quietly at, little Mouse?”

I looked at the back of the book, and it was called Religious Orders; so I said, “It’s called Religious Orders, but the picture I’m looking at has got two men dressed in black, with their faces covered all but their eyes, and they are carrying another man with something blue over him.”

“Fratelli della Misericordia,” said Godfather Gilpin.

“Who are they, and what are they doing?” I asked. “And why are their faces covered?”

“They belong to a body of men,” was Godfather Gilpin’s reply, “who bind themselves to be ready in their turn to do certain offices of mercy, pity, and compassion to the sick, the dying, and the dead. The brotherhood is six hundred years old, and still exists. The men who belong to it receive no pay, and they equally reject the reward of public praise, for they work with covered faces, and are not known even to each other. Rich men and poor men, noble men and working men, men of letters and the ignorant, all belong to it, and each takes his turn when it comes round to nurse the sick, carry the dying to hospital, and bury the dead.’

“Is that a dead man under the blue coverlet?” I asked with awe.

“I suppose so,” said Godfather Gilpin.

“But why don’t his friends go to the funeral?” I inquired.

“He has no friends to follow him,” said my godfather. “That is why he is being buried by the Brothers of Pity.”

Long after Godfather Gilpin had told me all that he could tell me of the Fratelli della Misericordia–long after I had put the congregation (including the Religious Orders and Taylor’s Sermons) back into the shelf to which they belonged–the masked faces and solemn garb of the men in the picture haunted me.

I have changed my mind a great many times, since I can remember, about what I will be when I am grown up. Sometimes I have thought I should like to be an officer and die in battle; sometimes I settled to be a clergyman and preach splendid sermons to enormous congregations; once I quite decided to be a head fireman and wear a brass helmet, and be whirled down lighted streets at night, every one making way for me, on errands of life and death.

But the history of the Brothers of Pity put me out of conceit with all other heroes. It seemed better than anything I had ever thought of–to do good works unseen of men, without hope of reward, and to those who could make no return. For it rang in my ears that Godfather Gilpin had said, “He has no friends–that is why he is being buried by the Brothers of Pity.”

I quite understood what I thought they must feel, because I had once buried a cat who had no friends. It was a poor half-starved old thing, for the people it belonged to had left it, and I used to see it slinking up to the back door and looking at Tabby, who was very fat and sleek, and at the scraps on the unwashed dishes after dinner. Mrs. Jones kicked it out every time, and what happened to it before I found it lying draggled and dead at the bottom of the Ha-ha, with the top of a kettle still fastened to its scraggy tail, I never knew, and it cost me bitter tears to guess. It cost me some hard work, too, to dig the grave, for my spade was so very small.

I don’t think Mrs. Jones would have cared to be a Brother of Pity, for she was very angry with me for burying that cat, because it was such a wretched one, and so thin and dirty, and looked so ugly and smelt so nasty. But that was just why I wanted to give it a good funeral, and why I picked my crimson lily and put it in the grave, because it seemed so sad the poor thing should be like that when it might have been clean and fluffy, and fat and comfortable, like Tabby, if it had had a home and people to look after it.