"See what I bring thee," he shouted. "See the pretty darlings!"

"Francesco, meschinello, where hast thou been this long time?" his mother scolded him, but she pressed the lovely flowers to her face. "Ah, the dear springtime!" she murmured, "the blessed flowers! Thank thee, carissimo."

But she put them down in a moment to go back to her embroidery. Lucia's fingers were never quiet long, for their work meant bread for her little son. Her beautiful embroideries were all that stood between him and hunger. He had no father, and he himself was still so little and so full of joy that she could not bear to set him to work.

"Ah, mother, such a pretty day!" he was telling her, as he danced and hovered about her, though realizing even in his eagerness that he must not interrupt her work. "The hills are all flowers,—tulips and lilies and these bright ones everywhere on all the hills. Piero and Maria and Giovanni and I, we have picked our arms full. We climbed very high, right under the great bell of Santa Scholastica."

"And what hast thou done with the rest of thy flowers? Tell me not that thou hast left the poor things to die!"

"No, no, mother dear, no. I brought mine all the way back to the Cappucini and left them for my own San Francesco."

"That was a good boy," his mother kissed him. "Though thou art very idle, thou hast a good heart. The Brothers say I should set thee to work and not let thee waste thy time all day on the hills."

"But mother," Francesco jumped up and down as if so his words could be hurried faster, "mother, the flowers! Who would pick them? And my good saint, who would bring them to him? And you told me he loves flowers. And today, mother," for a moment he stood between her and her work, looking up into her face with big eyes, "I thought he smiled at me. I looked long, hoping he would do it. And the wolf, too; Brother Wolf did not look so fierce as usual. And I thought, perhaps does he like flowers brought him besides his food?"

It was a picture of St. Francis shaking hands with the wolf to which Francesco had taken his flowers. For as the old story told, St. Francis had made the wolf agree to stop eating sheep and cattle and men and had promised him that instead he should be given food each day, and then the two had shaken hands to seal their pledge.

Lucia kissed her boy again. "Thou art full of fancies, and as dear as thou art naughty. And who knows?—it may be thy flowers as well as my prayers that have pleased the good saint, for today I have an order for a cloth for the altar of il Sagro Speco. It will give me work for months, and the pay is good."

"O mother, why must thou work so late? If I could but show thee! Hark, dost thou hear the river tumbling and running faster than ever and with such a noise? And the flowers—each day I will bring them to thee and San Francesco." Already he was out and off again, to feel even in the village street the last of the soft spring day.

Lucia smiled. In this little mountain village she was alone and far from her early home and friends, and she was poor and ill, but from Francesco's sunny spirit she drank a sweet wine that gave her life. So she had struggled on, and the monks of the convent high up on the hills had given her work for her fingers, and, what was more, had promised that if anything happened to her they would care for her boy.

St. Francis is said to have visited this monastery about 1218, and according to the story changed the thorns in its garden into roses. There is still in the church a portrait of St. Francis, said to have been painted during his lifetime

When Francesco was ten years old the day came when they had to make good their word. For his mother died, and he was taken from the poor little room they had called home to live in the old monastery of St. Benedict, which high above the town clung to the mountain side like one of its own rocks, and there he was taught as a novice. At first he was very unhappy. To lose his dear mother, to give up the gay roaming of the fields, to do always as he was told, to leave behind his loved saint and wolf, in fact to belong now to St. Benedict and not to his own saint,—why, he wondered, if he must be shut up, might it not have been at Cappucini with them?—it was all very hard. Still there was food in plenty, such as he had never known, and there was the singing from the big books. He learned to read quickly so that he might sing from these big choir books, for until now he had had no schooling; and also he liked to read and look at the books with beautiful pictures which were a wonder to him. And then after the evening meal the prior often read to them, and sometimes besides the lesson of the day, he read stories of the saints.

One time, to Francesco's joy, it was the story of his own saint which the prior read: how St. Francis had changed from being a wild, gay boy, and had given his coat to a beggar and taken his rags in exchange; how he had left his father and great riches to go to live in a cell and build a chapel and choose our Lady of Poverty; how he had gone out to teach both at home and in distant lands, and had preached even to the birds, since they too were God's creatures. This story Francesco loved above all the others. "For as he came to Bevagna," so the prior read, "he saw a flock of birds and stopped and preached to them; 'Brother birds, you ought to praise and love your Creator very much. He has given you feathers for clothing, wings for flying, and all that is needful for you. He has made you the noblest of his creatures; he permits you to live in the pure air, you have neither to sow nor to reap, and yet he takes care of you, watches over you and guides you.' Then the birds began to arch their necks and spread their wings and open their beaks as if to thank him, while he went up and down stroking them with the border of his tunic."

This and other stories of St. Francis and the birds the prior read: how he quieted the swallows when their loud twittering disturbed his preaching, how he sang a duet with the nightingale in praise of God and had to acknowledge that the bird sang better than he did, how he built nests for the doves in his monastery. To little Francesco these stories suggested new delights. Each day he went out and tried to coax the doves to come to him and even to tame the three ravens which lived at the monastery. He talked to them gently and fed them until at last they came to him without fear.

And there was one other story which the prior read that made the monastery a very different place to him. For it seemed that his own good saint had once visited this very monastery, and his picture which had been painted then was still in the lower church, and the roses which had sprung up at his touch in place of the thorns of St. Benedict were still in the garden. After that, no one had to urge Francesco to work in the little terraced garden, and he was always ready to say his prayers, if he might slip away into the lower church to say them before his own saint. Looking up into the face of the kind young monk of the picture, he used to tell him his troubles and feel better.

In the chapels of the monastery there was not only St. Francis's picture, but there were many other paintings, beautiful and rich in color, like the pictures of the books. Francesco loved them. He studied them until he knew every line by heart, just how an arm was bent or a horse's neck arched, or the eyes of a saint looked out from a long, sweet face. Then he tried to copy them, and his lessons were neglected, and the monks were constantly scolding him. But he was too busy to care what they said. Wherever he could find a bit of charcoal and a pavement or a wall to draw on, he was making his own pictures. Even the margins of the beautiful books became only empty spaces to him where he could copy the lines of the pictures; and so over and over again he was punished. Nevertheless, his pictures were improving. Month by month and year by year he kept at it until the arms of his people, too, bent as they should, and the men even walked and the horses looked like those in the pictures. Then he was ready for something new. He watched the monks and began to draw their faces on the wall, better and better, until one day a brother recognized himself, and then there was trouble. Francesco was brought before the abbot, and after he had been found guilty of every sin of laziness and irreverence he was shut up by himself in a cell to live on bread and water and do penance. Picture-making was not a deadly sin, and Francesco did not think it fair to punish him so hard. And as he could not get hold of even a bit of charcoal, and the best he could do was to wet a finger in the water they brought him and make pictures that were faded as soon as they were done, he grew desperate and began to question whether it was not desirable to run away.

One evening he called to one of the younger brothers and persuaded him to let him into the chapel to make his prayers. The Brother, knowing his devotion to the picture of St. Francis, let him in. Somehow he was forgotten, and Francesco, thankful to be out of his bare cell, crept behind a pillar prepared to spend the night on the floor. It became very dark and cold and still, but he was just getting off to sleep when a little noise startled him, and in the candlelight from a shrine he saw a man's shape. One of the brothers must have come for him. But then he saw that the man was not dressed in the long robe of the monks but had on trunk hose and a pointed cap, and a second man was beside him with a sack flung over his shoulder. They were going from the altar to the wardrobe where the church furnishings were kept,—the embroideries and the gold and the silver dishes. Francesco could not understand what it meant, and, curiosity getting the better of him, he crept up toward them, trying to go quietly and yet to see.

The men heard and turned. One raised an arm to strike, but then saw that it was only a boy. "What doest thou here?" he said in a gruff, thick voice.

Francesco was frightened. "I—I am running away," he said, not knowing how else to account for his being there.

"Ho, indeed, a likely place this!" the man sneered; and the other one snorted, "Run away! Thou wouldst, wouldst thou? We'll see about that. Perhaps thou shalt run away in truth." And the two men laughed and whispered together, and Francesco tried to slip off into the darkness. But a heavy hand caught him, for these robbers of a church had decided to steal a boy too, since it was safer to leave nothing behind to tell tales. Also a boy would be useful to them.

So, by morning Francesco was out on the open road, farther from his little hill town than he had ever been in his life. He was of course terribly frightened at first, but the men were not cruel to him, gave him food and, except for a little work, left him to do pretty much as he pleased. He found that whatever their occupation by night might be (and he was never with them then), by day they were jugglers who went from village to village doing their tricks and entertaining the folk in return for food and a few pieces of silver. For the traveling jugglers and singers were the theater of Francesco's time, and brought the villages entertainment.

It was a happy-go-lucky, picturesque life: no rules, no hours, no lessons at the monastery; no confinement inside walls, but the whole wide world to roam in; new sights to see, everything to learn, and the old freedom and joy of the flowers of the field. Francesco was glad. And when the two jugglers found that he had a clear, ringing boy's voice, they were even kind to him. Since he knew only the psalms and hymns of the brothers, they taught him some boisterous, rousing songs, and he sang from village to village to the delight of the people. Then, too, he made his pictures for them, and the jugglers themselves were proud when they saw what this boy could do. On the stone walls of the houses, on the pavements, in the sand, he traced pictures for the crowd, now showing them a monk with his cowl, now a donkey with his load, then, best of all, pictures of themselves,—often a caricature of some man in the crowd, done while he watched amid the jeers and shouts of his neighbors. Every Italian loved a picture: that was something that high or low could understand. A man might not read or write, but he could tell a good picture when he saw it. And so Francesco was immensely popular and so his masters, who made much money through his skill, treated him well, unless they were very drunk indeed.