Two bottles which had escaped the thieves disappeared into the pockets of one of the faithful.  No one understood how the priest could have avoided noticing something; because he did assert without further explanation that he had heard nothing.  The women were sorry for him, but the men for the most part admired the deed and laughed at the poor priest, who had the great fault, in their eyes, of being abstemious and not knowing how to mingle with people with that easy-going fraternity which comes only from emptying the wine glass together.

They laughed, especially during the sermon, at the deep frown on the priest’s face, which they attributed to the empty cellar.

No one mentioned the Moro.  Neither did he appear at St. Luke, either at the Mass or afterwards; so that poor Don Rocco was full of scruples and remorse, fearing that he had not conducted the affair properly.  But quite late the police arrived, examined everything, and questioned the priest.  Had he no suspicions?  No, none.  Where did he sleep?  How did it happen that he had not heard?  Really, he did not know himself; there had been people in the house.  At what time?  Some time between eleven and one o’clock.  One of the police smiled knowingly, but Don Rocco, innocent as a child, did not notice it.  The other one asked if he did not suspect a certain Moro, knowing, as they did, that shortly before eleven o’clock he had been seen going up to St. Luke.  At once Don Rocco showed great fervor in protesting that the man was certainly innocent, and, somewhat pressed by questions, brought forth his great reason:  it was precisely the Moro who had visited him at that hour, on his own business.  “Perhaps it was not on the business that you think,” said the policeman.  “If you knew what I think!” Don Rocco did not know, and in his humble placidity did not wish to know.  He never bothered himself with the thoughts of others.  It was sufficiently difficult for him to get a little lucidity into his own.  They asked him a few more questions, and then left, carrying with them the only object that they found in the cellar, a corkscrew, which the scrupulous Don Rocco was not willing, through the uncertainty of his memory, to claim as belonging to him, although he had paid his predecessor twice the value of it.  And now his cellar and his conscience were equally clear.

Towards dusk on the same day Don Rocco was reading the office, walking up and down for a little exercise without going far from the house.  Who could tell?  Perhaps that man might yet come.  Every now and then Don Rocco would stop and listen.  He heard nothing but the voices of wagon-drivers on the plain below, the noise of wheels, the barking of dogs.  Finally there was a step on the little path that led down through the cypress trees; a step slow but not heavy, a lordly step, with a certain subdued creak of ecclesiastical shoes; a step which had its hidden meaning, expressing to the understanding mind a purpose which, though not urgent, was serious.