Chapter VI: Part 6

"Something did turn up. While the engineer was oiling under his engine I got a wink from the fireman, climbed on the tender, crept beneath a tarpaulin, and rooted down in the coal. There, tired out, I fell asleep. I was awakened by the whistle of the locomotive, and then came the slow wheeze of the cylinder head, and we were off. Sleeping on a hard plank under a car going thirty miles an hour is a spring mattress to lying in a pile of coal with lumps as big as your head grinding into your back. Now and then the fireman--not my particular friend, but a man who had replaced him as I discovered when we whizzed past the light of a station--would ram his shovel within reach of my ribs--just missing me. But I didn't mind--every mile meant that much nearer home and less tramping in the heat and dust to get there. If I could manage to keep hidden until we reached Sydney I should gain one hundred--maybe two hundred--miles before morning.

"About midnight we came to a halt, followed by a lot of backing and filling--shunting here and there. The safety-valve was thrown wide open, or the exhaust, or something else, and suddenly the steam went out of her. Then came a dead silence--not a sound of any kind. Sore as I was--and every bone in my body ached--I wrenched myself loose, lifted the edge of the tarpaulin, and peeped out. The engine and tender were backed up against a building which looked like a round-house; not a soul was in sight. I slid to the ground and began to peer around. After a moment I caught the swing of a lantern and heard the steps of a man. It was a watchman going his rounds.

"'Warm night,' he hollered when he came abreast of me. He evidently took me for a fireman, and I didn't blame him, for I was black as soot--clothes, face, hands, and hair.

"'Yes,' I said, and stopped. It wouldn't do to undeceive him. Then I remembered the name of the station where I had boarded the tender. 'Been hot all the way from Merton. How far is that from Sydney?'

"'Oh, a devil of a way!' He lifted his lantern and held it to my face. 'Say, you ain't no fireman--you're a hobo, ain't ye?'

"I nodded.

"'And you're p'inted for Sydney? Well, it serves ye right for stealin' a ride; you're eighty-two miles further away than when ye started. That locomotive is a special and got return orders.'"

The Engineer threw back his head and roared.

"Yes, that's it, Herbert. I remember just how you looked when we ran against each other in Sydney."

"Not barefooted, were you, old fellow?" remarked Louis in a sympathetic tone. "That was tough."

"Barefooted? Not much!" exclaimed The Engineer. "He was quite a nob. That's why I made up to him; he was so much better dressed than I. And do you know, Herbert, I never heard a word of you from that time on until I struck one of your statues in the Royal Academy the other day. I never thought you'd turn out sculptor with medals and things. Thought you wanted more room to swing around in. This is something new, isn't it?"

Herbert took his freshly lighted cigar from his mouth long enough to say, "About as new as your building dams. You were trying to get into the real-estate business when I bid you good-by in Sydney. Did it work?"

"No, I got into jail instead."

Everybody stared.

"What was it all about?" asked Herbert, unperturbed.

"Stealing!"

"_Stealing!_" exclaimed Le Blanc.

"Yes. That was about it," he answered. "Only this time I tried to bag a government and got locked up for my pains. One of your countrymen"--and he nodded toward me--"was mixed up in it. By the way"--and he rose from his chair--"you don't mind my taking this candle, do you?--I've been looking at something in that cabinet over there all the evening and I can't stand it any longer. I may be wrong, but they look awfully like it."

He had reached the carved triptych, and was holding the flame of the candle within a few inches of a group of tiny figures--some of Lemois' most precious carvings--one the figure of a man with a gun.

"Just as I thought. Prison work, isn't it, Monsieur Lemois? Yes--of course it is--I see the tool marks. Made of soup bones. Oh, very good indeed--best I have ever seen. Where did you get this?"

"They were made by the French prisoners in Moscow," answered Lemois, who had also risen from his seat and was now standing beside him. "But how did you know?" he asked in astonishment. "Most of my visitors, if they look at them at all, think they are Chinese."

"Because no one, if he can get ivory, makes a thing like this of bone"--and he held it up to our gaze--"and everybody out of jail who has this skill _can_ get ivory. I've made a lot myself--never as fine as these--this man must have been an expert. I used to keep from going crazy by doing this sort of thing--that and the old dodge of taming fleas so they'd eat out of my hand. What a pile of good stuff you have here--regular museum"--and with a searching, comprehensive glance he replaced the candle and regained his chair.

I bent forward and touched his elbow.

"We've entertained all sorts of people here," I said with a laugh, "but I think this is the first time we have ever had an out-and-out ticket-of-leave man. Do you mind telling us how it happened?"

"No; but it wouldn't interest you. Just one of those fool scrapes a fellow gets into when he is chucked out neck and heels into the world."

Brierley drew his chair closer--so did Louis and Le Blanc.

Herbert glanced toward his friend. "Let them have it, old man. We promise not to set the dogs on you."

"Thanks. But it wouldn't be the first time. Well, all right if it won't bore you. Now let me think"--and he lifted his weather-bronzed face, made richer by the glow of the candles overhead, and began scratching his grizzly beard with his forefinger.

"It was after you left Borneo, Herbert, that I came across two fellows--Englishmen--who told me of some new gold diggings on the west coast, and I was fool enough to join them, working my passage on one of the home-going tramp steamers. Well, we thrashed about for six months and landed on one of the small islands in the Caribbean Sea--the name of which I forget--where we left the ship and hid until she disappeared. The gold fever was well out of us by that time, and, besides, I had gotten tired of scrubbing decks and my two fellow tramps of washing dishes. The port was a regular coaling station and some other craft would come along; if not, we could stay where we were. The climate was warm, bananas were cheap and plenty; we were entirely fit, and--like many another lot of young chaps out for a lark--did not care a tinker's continental what happened. That, if you think about it, is the high-water mark of happiness--to be perfectly well, strong, twenty-five years of age, and ready for anything that bobs up.

"This time it was a small schooner with a crew of about one hundred men, instead of the customary ten or twelve. A third of them came ashore, bought provisions and water, and were about to shove off to the vessel again, when one of my comrades recognized the mate as an old friend. He offered to take us with them, and in half an hour we had gathered together our duds and had pushed off with the others. The following week we ran into a sheltered cove, where we began landing our cargo. Then it all came out: we were loaded to the scuppers with old muskets in cases, some thousand rounds of ammunition, and two small, muzzle-loading field-guns. There was a revolution in Boccador--one of the small South American republics--they have them every year or so--and we were part of the insurgent navy! If we were caught we were shot; if we got a new flag on top of Government House in the capital of San Josepho, we would have a plantation apiece and negroes enough to run it. It sounded pleasant, didn't it?

"I'm not going into all the details--it's the story of the jail you want, not the revolution. Well, we had two weeks of tramping up to our waists in the swamps; three days of fighting, in which one of the field-guns blew off its nose, killing the mate; and the next thing I knew, my two companions and I were looking down the muzzles of a dozen rifles held within three feet of our heads. That ended it and we were marched into town and locked up in the common jail--and rightly named, I tell you, for a filthier or more deadly hole I never got into. It was a square, two-story building--all four sides to the town--with a patio, or court, in the centre. Outside was a line of sentries and inside were more sentries and a couple of big dogs.

"They put us on the ground floor with a murderous-looking chap for guard. As the place was packed with prisoners, we three were shoved into one cell. Every morning at daylight one or two--once six--poor devils were led out; the big gate was opened, and then there would come a rattling of rifle-shots, and when the six came back they were on planks with sheets over them. All this we could see by standing on each other's shoulders and looking over the grating.

"Our turn came the morning of the seventh day. The door was unlocked and we were ordered to fall in. But we didn't go through the big outer gate; we were led to a door across the yard and into a bare room where another murderous-looking chap, in a dirty uniform with shoulder-straps and a sword, sat at a table. On either side of him were two more ruffians, one with an inkstand. Not a man Friday of them spoke anything but Spanish. When we were pushed in front of his highness in shoulder-straps, he looked us over keenly and began whispering to the man with the ink. Then to my surprise--and before either I or my two friends--one of whom spoke a little Spanish--could utter a protest--right-about-face, and we were hustled back into our cell and locked up again.

"For three days and nights the usual jail things happened: We had two meals a day--bone soup and a hunk of mouldy bread; the guard tramped in the dust outside our cell, while at night another took his place--the dogs prowling or sniffing at the crack of our door; at daylight the rifle-shots!

"We had started to work for our release by that time, and by persistent begging got a sheet of paper, and, with the help of my companion, I wrote a letter to 'his Excellenza,' as the guard called his nibs, informing him that we were English tourists who had taken passage for sheer love of adventure, and demanding that our case be brought to the attention of the English consul.

"One week passed and then a second before we were informed by the head jailer that there _was_ no English consul, and that if there had been it would have made no difference, as we had been taken with arms in our hands, and that but for some inquiries put on foot by his Excellenza we would have been shot long ago.

"So the hours and days dragged on and we had about started in to make our wills when, one morning after our slop coffee had been pushed in to us, the bolts were slid back and the nattiest-looking young fellow you ever laid your eyes on stepped inside. He was about twenty-four, was dressed from head to foot in a suit of white duck, and looked as if he had just cleared the deck of the royal yacht. With him were two slovenly looking functionaries, one of whom carried a note-book. The young fellow eyed us all three, sizing us up with the air of a man accustomed to that sort of thing, and said with an air of authority:

"'I am the American consul. Your communication was brought to me because your government is not represented here. You're in a bad fix, but I'll help you out if I can. Now tell me all about it.'

"Tell him about it! Why, we nearly fell on his neck, and before he left he had our whole story in his head and a lot of our letters and cards in his clothes. They might be of use, he said, in proving that we had not, by any means, started out to undermine his Supreme Highness's government. But that under fear of death--and he winked meaningly--we had been compelled to take up arms against the most illustrious republic of Boccador.

"Nine long, weary months passed after this and not another human being crossed our threshold except the head jailer. When we bombarded him with questions about the fellow who had passed himself off as the American consul, and who had stolen our letters and had never shown up since--damn him!--we had all learned to speak a little Spanish by this time--he pretended not to hear and, his inspection over, locked the door behind him. Pretty soon we fell into the ways of all disheartened prisoners--each man following the bent of his nature. I warded off sickening despair by carving with my pocket-knife--which they let me keep as being too small to do them any harm--little figures out of the beef bones I found in my soup. That's how I came to recognize those in Monsieur Lemois' cabinet. When I was lucky enough to get hold of a knuckle bone with a rounded knob at the end, I made a friar with a bald head, the smooth knob answering for his pate. Other bones were turned into grotesque figures of men, women, and animals. These I gave to the sentry, who sent them to his children. Often he brought me small pieces of calico and I made dresses and trousers for them. When I got tired of that I trained two fleas--and they were plenty--to play leap-frog up my arm.

"When these little diversions failed to drive dull care away, we passed the time cursing the gentleman in the immaculate cotton ducks. He had either lied to us, or was dead, or had been transferred--anyway, he had gone back on us and left us to rot in jail.

"At last we determined to escape.

"We had made that same resolution every day for months and had planned out half a dozen schemes, some of which might have been successful but for two difficulties--the double guard on the outside of the building and the two dogs in the jail-yard. There was now but one chance of success. We would dig a hole in the dirt floor clear under the wall, watch for a stormy night, and make a break for the town and the coast, where we might be able to signal some trading craft and so get away.

"So we started to digging, beginning on the side opposite the door--our utensils being a sharpened bone, my pocket-knife, and a bayonet which had dropped from a sentry's scabbard, and which I managed to pick up on our exercise walk in the court-yard and conceal in the straw on which we slept. This straw too helped hide the dirt. We rammed the wisps up into each end of the pallets, put the excavated earth in the middle with a dusting of loose straw over it, and so hid our work from view. At the end of a month we had a hole under the wall large enough to wriggle in. I could see the daylight through the loose earth on the other side. Then we waited for a storm, the rainy season being on and thunder showers frequent. Two, three, four nights went by without a cloud; then it began to pour. We determined to try it just before the guards were changed. This was at 2 A. M. by the church clock. The outgoing sentry would be tired then and the new man not thoroughly awake.

"When the hour came I crawled in head first, worked myself to the end of the tunnel, and, putting out my hands to break away the remaining clods of earth, came bump up against a piece of heavy board. There I lay trembling. The board could never have rolled down from anywhere, nor could our opening have been detected from the outside.

"Somebody had placed it there on purpose!

"I wriggled back feet foremost, whispered in my companions' ears what I had found, and we all three sat up the rest of the night wondering what the devil it meant. When morning broke, the head jailer came in. I noticed instantly a change in his manner. Instead of a few perfunctory questions, he gave a cursory glance around the cell, his eyes resting on the pile of straw, and turning short on his heel left without a word.

"There was no question now but we were suspected, so we held a council of war and determined to keep quiet--at least for some nights. What was up we didn't know, but at all events it was best to go slow. So we stuffed most of the dirt back in the hole and waited--our ears open to every sound, our teeth chattering. You get pretty nervous in jail--especially when you have about made up your mind that the next hour is your last.

"We didn't wait long.

"That afternoon the bolts were slid back and the head jailer, who had never before appeared at that hour, stood in the doorway.

"I thought right away that it was all over with us; that we were discovered and that we were either to be shot or moved to another cell--I really didn't care which, for instant death could not be much worse than lingering in a South American prison until we were gray-bearded and forgotten.

"The jailer stepped inside, half closed the door, and made this announcement:

"'The American consul is outside and wants to see you.' Then he stepped out, leaving the door open.

"They have a way of coaxing you to escape down in that country and then filling you full of lead. It's justifiable murder when sometimes a trial and conviction might raise unpleasant international questions. We all three looked at each other and instantly decided not to swallow the bait. The American consul dodge had been tried when they wanted to get legal possession of our letters. So it isn't surprising that we didn't believe him. Then, to my astonishment, I caught through the crack of the door a suit of white duck, and the natty young man stepped in.

"'I've been down the coast,' he began as chipper as if he was apologizing for not having called after we had invited him to dinner, 'or I should have been here before. I have a permit from the governor to come as often as I like, or as often as you would be glad to see me. I must tell you, however, that I am pledged to keep faith with the authorities, and it is their confidence in me which has gained me this privilege. I can bring you nothing to eat or drink, no tools or knickknacks or any bodily comforts. I can only bring myself. This I have told his Excellenza, who has his orders, and who understands.' Then he turned to the jailer. 'Get me a stool and I will stay a while with them. You can leave the door open; I will be responsible that none of them attempts to escape.'

"When the jailer was out of hearing, he passed around cigarettes, lighted his own, and started in to tell us the news of the day: what was going on in town and country; how the revolution had been put down; how many insurgents had been shot, exiled, or sent to horrible prisons--worse than ours, which, he informed us, was really only a sort of police station and unsafe except for the dogs and the guards, who were picked men and who had never been known to neglect their duty. Only the year before five men had attempted to dig their way out and had been shot as they were climbing the outside wall--rather dispiriting talk for us, to say the least, but it was talk, and that was what we hungered for, especially as his spirits never flagged.

"All this was more or less entertaining, and he would have had our entire confidence but for two things which followed, and which we could not understand. One was that he always chose rainy or stormy nights for his subsequent visits, dropping in on us at all hours, when we least expected him; and the other that he never referred to what was being done for our release. That he would not discuss.

"By and by we began to grow uneasy and suspect him. One of the men insisted that he was too damned polite to be honest, and that the American consul yarn was a put-up job. Anyway, he was getting tired of it all. It would take him but half an hour to dig the loose earth out of the tunnel, and he was going to begin right away if he went at it alone.

"We at once fell to, working like beavers, digging with everything we had--our fingers bleeding--until we had cleaned out the dirt to the plank. Then we crawled back and waited for the consul's customary visit. After that was over--no matter how long it lasted--we'd make the dash.

"He came on the minute; and this time, to our intense disgust, brought his guitar--said he thought we might like a little music--and without so much as by-your-leave opened up with negro melodies and native songs, the instrument resting in the hollow of his knee, one leg crooked over the other, a cigarette stuck tight to his lower lip.

"Hour after hour went by and still he sang on--French, German, Italian--anything and everything--rolling out the songs as if we had been so many classmates at a college supper. Charming, of course, had we not had a hole behind us and freedom within sight.

"Hints, yawns, even blunt proposals to let us go to bed, had no effect. Further than these we dared not go. We were afraid to turn him out bodily lest we should be suspected of trying to get rid of him for a purpose. To have let him into the secret was also out of the question. Better wait until he was gone.

"Would you believe it, he never left until broad daybreak, his confounded irritating cheerfulness keeping up to the last, even to his tossing his fingers to us in good-by, quite as he might have done to his sweetheart.

"At eight o'clock on that same morning, not more than two hours after he had left, there came a bang at the door with a sword-hilt, the bolts were drawn, and we were marched into the court-yard between five soldiers in command of a sergeant. Then came the orders to fall in, and we were pushed into the same room where, nearly a year before, we had been examined by the ruffian in shoulder-straps and sent back to our cell.

"And here I must say that, for the first time since our capture, I lost all hope. Five men for three of us, and two of the cartridges blank!

"The squad closed in and we were lined up in front of a table before another black-haired, greasy, villanous-looking reptile who read the death-warrant, as near as I could make out--he spoke so fast. Then he rose from his seat, bowed stiffly, and left the room. Next the sergeant saluted us, ordered his men to fall in, and left the room. Then the jailer stepped forward, shook our hands all around, and left the room.

"We were free!

"Outside, in the broad glare of the scorching sun, his boyish face in a broad grin, stood the consul, looking as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox.

"'I am sorry you found me such a bore last night,' he said, gay and debonair as an old beau at a wedding, 'but there was nothing else to do. If I'd gone home earlier and let you crawl out of that hole, you would have been shot to a dead certainty. I knew a month ago you were at work on it, and when it was nearly finished I got permission to drop in on you. The plank that you ran up against I had put there with the help of the jailer. It was meant to keep you quiet until my mail got in. I was helpless, of course, to assist you until it did, being my government's representative. It arrived yesterday, informing me that our State Department has taken up your cases with your government and has entered a formal protest. Now all of you come over to the consulate, and let me see what I can do to fix you out with some clothes and things.

"'After that we'll have breakfast.'"

XI

IN WHICH THE HABITS OF CERTAIN GHOSTS, GOBLINS, BANDITS, AND OTHER OBJECTIONABLE PERSONS ARE DULY SET FORTH

The Engineer's story whetted every one's appetite for more. Lemois, hoping to further inspire him, left his chair, crossed the room, and began searching through the old fifteenth-century triptych to find some object of interest which would start him to talking again as entertainingly as had the carved soup bones from the Moscow prison. When he reoccupied his seat he held in his hand a small statuette in terra-cotta. This he placed on the table where the light fell full upon it.

"You overlooked this, I am afraid," he said, addressing The Engineer. "It is one of the most precious things I own. It is a portrait of Madame de Rabutin-Chantal, the grandmother of Madame de Sévigné." The Sévigné family were a favorite topic with the old gentleman, and anything pertaining to them of peculiar interest to him. "You will note, I am sure, Monsieur Herbert, the marvellous carving especially in the dress and about the neck."

Before Herbert could answer, Louis craned his head and a disgusted look overspread his face. "I hope," he said, "she didn't look like that, Lemois--squatty old party with a snub nose."

Herbert, ignoring Louis' aside, reached over and took the little image in his fingers.

"Squatty or not, Louis, it is an exquisite bit--modern Tanagra, really. Seventeenth century, isn't it, Lemois?"

Lemois nodded. If he had heard Louis' remark he gave no sign of the fact.

"Yes," continued Herbert, "and wonderfully modelled. We can't do these things now--not in this way"--and he passed it to The Engineer, who turned it upsidedown, as if it were a teacup, glanced at the bottom in search of its mark, and without a word handed it back.

Lemois replaced the precious object in the triptych, his mind still filled with his favorite topic, and, turning suddenly, wheeled a richly upholstered chair from a far corner into the light.

"And here is another relic of Madame Sévigné, monsieur. This is madame's own chair; the one she always used when she stopped here, sometimes for days at a time, on her way to her country-seat, Les Rochers. The room which she occupied, and in which she wrote many of her famous letters, is just over our heads. If monsieur will shift his seat a little he can see the very spot in which she sat."

But The Engineer neither shifted his seat nor rose to the bait. None of the small things of past ages appealed to him. Even mummies and the spoil of coffins three thousand years old--and he had inspected many of them--failed to stir him. It was what was built over them, and the brains and power that hoisted the stones into place, as well as the forces of wind and water--the song of the creaking crane--those were the things that thrilled him. That Herbert, after his career in the open, had contented himself with a few tools and a mass of clay was what had most surprised him when he came upon his statues in the Royal Academy.

So he kept silent until what Louis called the "bric-à-brac moment" had passed--such discussion often occurring whenever Lemois felt he had a new audience. Gradually the talk drifted into other channels. Mistaken identity and the injustice of convictions on circumstantial evidence were gone into, The Engineer recalling some of his own errors in dealing with his men in Egypt. At this Le Blanc, wandering slightly from the main topic, gave an account of a mysterious woman in white who on certain nights when the moon was bright used to descend the wide staircase of a French château which he often visited, the apparition being the ghost of a beautiful countess who had been walled up somewhere below stairs by a jealous husband, and who took this mode of publishing her wrongs to the world. Le Blanc had seen her himself, first at the head of the great staircase and then as she crept slowly down the steps and disappeared through the solid wall to the left of the baronial fireplace. His hostess, who affected not to believe in such uncanny mysteries, tried to persuade him it was merely a shaft of moonlight stencilled on the white wall, but Le Blanc scouted the explanation and was ready to affirm on his word of honor that she looked at him out of her great, round, beseeching eyes, and would, he felt assured, have spoken to him had not one of the servants opened a door at the moment and so scared her away.

I told of a somewhat similar experience in which a strong-minded Englishwoman, who laughed at ghosts and all other forms of unsavory back numbers, and a bishop of distinction were mixed up. There was a haunted room in the Devonshire country house that no one dared occupy. Another white figure prowled here, but whether man or woman, no one knew. That it was quite six feet high and broad in proportion, and had at various times scared the wits out of several nervous and semi-hysterical females who had passed the night between the sheets, all agreed. As it was the week-end, there were a goodly number of visitors and the house more or less crowded. When the haunted room was mentioned, even the bishop demurred--preferring to take the one across the corridor--he being a frequent visitor and knowing the lay of the land. The strong-minded young woman, however, jumped at the chance. She had all her life been hoping to see a ghost and, in order to allow his or her ghostship free entrance, had left the door of the haunted room unlocked when she got into bed. Despite her screwed-up courage she began to get nervous, and when she heard the door creak on its hinges and felt the cold, clammy air of the corridor on her cheek, she slid down off her pillow and ducked her head under the sheet. Then, to her horror, she felt the blanket slowly slipping away and, peering out, was frozen stiff to see a tall figure, dressed in white, standing at the foot of her bed, its long, skinny fingers clutching at the covering. Without even a groan she passed promptly into a fit of unconsciousness, known as a dead faint, where, with only a sheet over her, she lay until the cold woke her. She left by the early coach and believes to this day that she would have been strangled had she offered the slightest protest. Nor did her hostess's letter, covering a full explanation, satisfy her. "It was not a ghost you saw, my dear, but the bishop, who wanted an extra blanket, and who jumped out of bed in search of one, and into your room, thinking it empty. It's a mercy you didn't scream, for then the situation could never have been explained--better say nothing about it, or, if you do--stick to its being a ghost."

While these and other yarns were sent spinning around the table, Louis had cut in, of course, with all sorts of asides--some whispers behind his hand to his next neighbor--some squibs of criticism exploded without rhyme or reason in our midst--all jolly and diverting, but nothing approaching a story short or long.

My own and Herbert's efforts to draw him out into something sustained brought only--"Don't know any yarns" and "Never had anything happen to me"--followed at last by--"The only time I was ever in a tight place was when I was sketching in Perugia; then I jumped through the window and took most of the sash with me."

"Let's have it!" we all cried in one breath. No one was so lively and entertaining once we got him started.

"That's all there is to it. They had locked the door on me--three of them--and when the back of the chair gave out--I was swinging it around my head--I made a break for out-of-doors."

"Oh!--go on--go on, Louis!" came the chorus.

"No, I'd rather listen to you men. I haven't been tattooed in the South Seas, nor half murdered rounding Cape Horn. I'm just a plain painter, and my experience is limited, and my three Perugian villains were just three dirty Italians, one of whom was the landlord who had charged me five prices for my meal, and tried to hold me up until I paid it--only a vulgar brawl, don't you see? The landlord had his head in splints when I passed him the next day."

"You were lucky to escape," said The Engineer. "They have a way of knifing you while you are asleep. I had a friend who just got out of one of those Italian dives with his life."

"Yes, that was why I was swinging the chair. Hard for any three men to get at you if its legs and back hold out. Of course a fellow can sneak up behind you with a knife and then you--By Jingo!--come to think of it, I _can_ tell you a story! It just popped into my head. You have brought it all back"--and he nodded to our guest--"about the closest shave--so I thought at the time--that I ever had in my life. Your ghost stories don't hold a candle to it--stealthy assassin--intended victim sound asleep--miraculous escape!--Oh! a blood-curdler!--I was scared blue."

Everybody shifted their chairs and craned their heads to watch Louis' face the better, overjoyed that he had at last wakened up. Louis scared blue--and he a match for any five men--meant a tale worth hearing.

"It was the summer I made those studies of mountain brooks flowing out of the glaciers--you remember them, Herbert? Anyway, I was across the Swiss border, and in a ragged Italian town dumped down on the side of a hill as if it had been spilt from a cart--one of those sprawled-out towns with a white candle of a campanile overtopping the heap. The diligence, about sunup, had dropped me at the exact spot with my traps, and was hardly out of sight before I had started to work, and I kept it up all day, pegging away like mad, as I always do when a subject takes hold of me--and this particular mountain brook was choking the life out of me, with lots of deep greens and transparent browns all through it, and the creamy froth of a glass of beer floating on the top.

"When the sun began to sink down behind the mountains I realized that it was about time to find a place to sleep. I was at work on a 40 x 30--rather large for out-doors--and, as it would take me several days, I had arranged with a goatherd--who lived in a slant with stones enough on its roof to keep it from being blown into space--to let me store my wet canvas and my palette and box under its supports. I'd have bunked in with the goats if I'd had anything to cover me from the cold--and it gets pretty cold there at night. Then again I knew from experience that a goatherd's sour bread and raw onions were not filling at any price. What I really wanted was two rooms in some private house, or over a wine-shop or village store, with a good bed and a place where I could work in bad weather. I had found just such a place the summer before, on the Swiss side of the mountains, belonging to an old woman who kept a cheap grocery and who gave me for a franc a day her two upper rooms--and mighty comfortable rooms they were, and with a good north light. So I hung the wet canvas where the goats couldn't lick off my undertones, shouldered my knapsack, and started downhill to the village.

"I found that the red-tiled houses followed a tangle of streets, no two of them straight, but all twisting in and out with an eye on the campanile, and so I struck into the crookedest, wormed my way around back stoops, water barrels, and stone walls with a ripening pumpkin here and there lolling over their edges, and reached the church porch just as the bell was ringing for vespers. When you want to get any information in an Italian village, you go to the priest, and if he is out, or busy, or checking off some poor devil's sins--and he has plenty of it to do--then hunt up the sacristan.

"There must have been an extra load of peccadilloes on hand that night, for I didn't find his reverence, nor the sacristan, nor anybody connected with the church. What I did find was a chap squatting against one side of the door with a tray on his lap filled with little medals and rosaries--and a most picturesque-looking chap he was. His feet were tied up in raw hides; his head bound in a red cotton handkerchief, over which was smashed a broad-brimmed sombrero; his waist was gripped with another to match; his lank body squeezed into a shrunken blue jacket, and his shambly legs wobbled about in yellow breeches. The sombrero shaded two cunning, monkey eyes, a hooked nose, a wavering mouth, and a beard a week old. It was his smile, though, that tickled my funny-bone, and this happened when he held up the tray for my inspection--one of those creepy, oily smiles that spread slowly over his dirty, soapy face, like the swirl of oil and turpentine which floats over a basin of suds when you wash your brushes.

"Not a very inviting person;--a loafer, a lazzaroni, a dead-beat of a dago, really--and yet my heart warmed to him all the same when he answered me with enough French sandwiched between his 'o's' and 'i's' to help out my bad Italian. What finally trickled from his wrinkled lips was the disappointing announcement that no hostelry at all worthy of the Distinguished Signore existed in the village, nor was there money enough in the place for any one of the inhabitants to have a surplus of anything--rooms especially--but there was--here the oily smile overran the soap-suddy face--a most excellent casino kept by an equally excellent citizen where travellers were wont to stay overnight; that it was up a back street--they were all 'back' so far as I had seen--and that, if the Distinguished Signore would permit, he would curtail the sale of his religious relics long enough to conduct his D. S. to the very door.

"So we started, the vendor of 'helps to piety' ahead and I following behind, my knapsack over my shoulder. I soon discovered that if the casino was up a back street he was going a long way round to reach it. First he dived into an alley behind the mouldy, plaster-pock-marked church--the candle-stick of the campanile--ducked under an archway--'_sotto portico_,' he called it--opened out into a field, struck across a little bridge into another street--hardly a soul about, nothing alive--nothing except dogs and children--all of which he explained was a short cut. For some time his dodging made no impression on me; then the way he rounded the corners and hugged the shadowed side of the street, away from the few dim lamps, set me to wondering as to his intentions. What the devil did he mean by picking out these blind alleys? He must have seen that I was no tenderfoot or tourist who had lost his way.

"With this I began to fix certain landmarks in my memory in case I had to make my way back alone. There was no question now in my mind as to the town's character. Half the murders and hold-ups in the large cities are concocted in these villages, and this had rascality stamped all over it. Every corner I turned looked more forbidding than the last--every street seemed to end in a trap--the kind of street a scene-painter tries to produce when he has a murder up a back alley to provide for the third act. And crooked!--well, the tracks of a bunch of fishworms crawling out from under a brick were straight compared to it. When I at last protested--for I was getting ravenous and I must say a trifle uneasy--the beggar bowed low enough for me to see the tail of his jacket over his sombrero, and gave as a reason that any other route would have greatly fatigued the signore, all of which he must have known was a lie. The fact was that if I had known how to get out of the tangle, I would have lifted him by the scruff of his neck and the slack of his trousers and dropped him into the first convenient hole.

"When he did come to a halt I found myself before a low two-story ruin of a house--almost the last house in the village, and on the opposite edge from that which I had entered on my way to the church. It was evidently a common road house, the customary portico covered with grape-vines and a square room on the ground floor, containing one or more tables. In the rear, so I discovered later, was a dreary yard corralling a few scraggly trees--one overhanging a slanting shed under which the cooking was done--and below this tree an assortment of chairs and tables under an arbor, where a bottle of wine and a bit of cheese or bunch of grapes were served when the sun was hot.

"It was now quite dark, and my guide had some difficulty in getting his fingers on the latch of the garden gate. When it swung open I followed up a short path and found myself in a square room which was lighted by a single lamp. Under this sat another oily Italian, in his shirt-sleeves, eating from an earthen bowl. Not a picturesque-looking chap at all, but a fat, swarthy lump of a man with small, restless eyes, stub nose, and flabby lips--one of those fellows you think is fast asleep until you catch him studying you from under his eyebrows, and begin to look out for his knife. The only other occupant of the room was a woman who was filling his glass from a straw-covered flask--a thin, flat-bosomed woman who stooped when she walked, and who sneaked a glance at me now and then from one side of her nose. I might better have slept in the slant and bunked in with the goats.

"My guide bent down and whispered a word in his ear; the man jumped up--looked me all over--a boring, sizing-up look--like a farmer guessing the weight of a steer--bowed grandiloquently, and with an upward flourish of his hand put his house, his fortune, and his future happiness at my feet. There were bread and wine, and cheese and grapes; and there were also eggs, and it might be a slice of pork. As for chicken--he would regret to his dying day that none was within his reach. Would I take my repast in the house at the adjoining table, or would I have a lamp lighted in the arbor and eat under the trees?

"I preferred the lamp, of course, under the trees; picked up the flask of wine, poured out a glass for my guide, which he drank at a gulp, and handed him a franc for his trouble. The woman gave a sidelong glance at the coin and followed him out into the garden; there the two stood whispering. On her return, while she passed close enough to me to graze my arm, she never once raised her eyes, but kept her face averted until she had hidden herself in the kitchen.

"I had selected the garden for two reasons: I wanted the air and I wanted to know something more of my surroundings. What I saw--and I could see now the more clearly, for the moon had risen over the mountain--were two rear windows on the second floor, their sills level with the sloping shed, and a tree with its branches curved over its roof. This meant ventilation and a view of the mountains at sunrise--always a delight to me. It also meant an easy escape out the window, over the roof, and down the tree-trunk to the garden, and so on back to the goatherd if anything unusual should happen. That, however, could take care of itself. The sensible thing to do was to eat my supper, order my coffee to be ready at six o'clock, go to bed in one of these rear rooms, and get back to my work before the heat became intense.

"All this was carried out--that is, the first part of it. I had the rear room, the one I had picked out for myself, not by my choice but by his, the landlord selecting it for me; it would be cooler, he said, and then I could sleep with my window open, free from the dust which sometimes blew in the front windows when the wind rose--and it was rising now, as the signore could hear. Yes, I should be called at six, and my coffee would be ready--and 'may the good God watch over your slumbers, most Distinguished of Excellencies.'

"This comforting information was imparted as I followed him up a break-neck stair and down a long, narrow corridor, ending in a small hall flanked by two bedroom doors. The first was mine--and so was the candle which he now placed in my hand--and 'will your Excellency be careful to see that it is properly blown out before your Excellency falls asleep?' and so I bade him good-night, pushed in the door, held the sputtering candle high above my head, and began to look around.

"It wouldn't have filled your soul with joy. Had I not been tired out with my day's work I would have called him back, read the riot act, and made him move in some comforts. The only things which could be considered furniture were a heavy oaken chest and a solid wooden bed--a box of a bed with a filling of feathers supporting two hard pillows. And that was every blessed thing the room contained except a toy pitcher and basin decorating the top of the chest; a white cotton curtain stretched across the lower sash of the single window; a nail for my towel, a row of wooden pegs for my clothes, and a square of looking-glass which once had the measles. Not a chair of any kind, no table, no wash-stand. This was a place in which to sleep, not sit nor idle in. Off with your clothes and into bed--and no growling.

"I walked to the open window, pushed aside the cotton curtain, and looked out on the sloping shed and overhanging tree, and the garden below, all clear and distinct in the light of the moon. I could see now that the tree had either prematurely lost its leaves or was stone dead. The branches, too, were bent as if in pain.

"The correct drawing of trees, especially of their limbs and twig ends, has always been a fad of mine, and the twistings of this old scrag were so unusual, and the tree itself so gnarled and ugly, that I let my imagination loose, wondering whether, like the villagers, it was suffering from some unconfessed sin, and whether fear of the future and the final bonfire, which overtakes most of us sooner or later, was not the cause of its writhings. With this I blew out the candle and crawled into bed, where I lay thinking over the events of the evening and laughing at myself for being such a first-class ass until I fell asleep.

"How long I slept I do not know, but when I woke it was with a start, all my faculties about me. What I heard was the sound of steps on the shed outside my window--creaking, stealthy steps as of a man's weight bending the supports of the flimsy shed. I raised myself cautiously on my elbow and looked about me. The square of moonlight which had patterned the floor when I first entered the room was gone, although the moon was still shining. This showed me that I had slept some time. I noticed, too, that the wind had risen, although very little seemed to penetrate the apartment, the curtains only flopping gently in the draught.

"I lay motionless, hardly breathing. Had I heard aright--or was it a dream? Again came the stealthy tread, and then _the shadow of a hand_ crept across the curtain. This sent me sitting bolt upright in bed. There was no question now--some deviltry was in the air.

"I slid from under the cover, dropped to the floor, flattened myself to the matting, worked my body to the window-sill, and stood listening. He must have heard me, for there came a sudden halt and a quick retreat. Then all was silent.

"I waited for some minutes, reached up with one hand and gently lowered the sash a foot or more, leaving room enough for me to throw it up and spring out, but not room enough for him to slide in without giving me warning. If the brute tried it again I would paste myself to the wall next the sash where I could see him, and he not see me, and as he ducked his head to crawl in I'd hit him with all my might; that would put him to sleep long enough for me to dress, catch up my traps, and get away.

"Again the step and the shadow. This time he stopped before he reached the window-sill. He had evidently noticed the difference in the height of the sash. Then followed a hurried retreating footstep on the roof. I craned my head an inch or more to see how big he was, but I was too late--he had evidently dropped to the garden below.

"I remained glued to the window-jamb and waited. I'd watch now for his head when he pulled himself up on the roof. If it were the lumpy landlord, the best plan was to plant the flat of my boot in the pit of his stomach--that would double him up like a bent pillow. If it was the brigand with the rosaries, or some of his cut-throat friends, I would try something else. I had no question now that I had been enticed here for the express purpose of doing me up while I was asleep. The mysterious way in which I had been piloted proved it; so did my guide's evident anxiety to avoid being seen by any of the inhabitants. Then there bobbed up in my mind the cool, sizing-up glance of the landlord as he looked me over. This clinched my suspicions. I was in for a scrap and a lively one. If there were two of them, I'd give them both barrels straight from the shoulder; if there were three or more, I'd fight my way out with a chair, as I had done at Perugia.

"With this I came to a sudden halt and moved to the middle of the room. There I stood, straining my eyes in the dim light, hoping to find something with which to brain the gang should they come in a bunch. I took hold of the bed and shook it--the posts and back were as solid as a cart body. The chest was worse--neither of them could be whirled around my head as a club, as I had used the chair at Perugia. Next I tried the door, and found it without lock or bolt--in fact it swung open as noiselessly and easily as if it had been greased. The toy pitcher and basin came next--too small even to throw at a cat. It was a case, then, of bare fists and the devil take the hindmost.