I took it up in my arms and carried it sorrowfully to Godfather Gilpin.  He was very kind, and said it was not hurt, and I might go on playing with the others; but I could see him stroking its brown leather and gold back, as if it had been bruised and wanted comforting, and I was far too sorry about it to go on preaching, even if I had had anything to preach.

I picked up the smallest book I could see in the congregation, and sat down and pretended to read.  There were pictures in it, but I turned over a great many, one after the other, before I could see any of them, my eyes were so full of tears of mortification and regret.  The first picture I saw when my tears had dried up enough to let me see was a very curious one indeed.  It was a picture of two men carrying what looked like another man covered with a blue quilt, on a sort of bier.  But the funny part about it was the dress of the men.  They were wrapped up in black cloaks, and had masks over their faces, and underneath the picture was written, “Fratelli della Misericordia”—­“Brothers of Pity.”

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.