urged, could Luigi have known there was a hole there, unless he had been examining his pockets? And an hour later poor Luigi, with gyves upon his wrists, was ignominiously led through the Piazza, all blazing with acetylene lights and resonant with the blare of the band, and was clapped into prison to await the formal charge.

Arrived there, he was searched, and a similar examination was made in his room at his mother's house, where he went to sleep at night, but nothing that ever so remotely resembled a German portfolio or a note for a hundred liras was found, and he still doggedly denied his guilt. Then, since nothing incriminating could be got out of him, the key was turned, while through the small high-grated window came the sound of the band in the Piazza for this festa night. Later, by standing on his board bed, he could see the fiery segment of the aspiring path of the rockets, as they ascended from the peak above the Piazza, and listen to the echo of their explosions flap and buffet against the cliffs of Monte Gennaro. But it was from prison that he saw and heard.

Outside in the Piazza the tragic history of his incarceration formed a fine subject for talk, and public opinion, which cheerfully supposed him guilty, found extenuating circumstances that almost amounted to innocence. The provocation of being obliged to spend the best part of a festa afternoon in walking down to the sea with a fat white Tedesco was really immense, and the reward of twopence for those lost hours of holiday was nothing less than an insult. What wonder if Luigi for a moment mislaid his honesty, what wonder if when so smooth-faced and ready-made a temptation came, he just yielded to it for a second? Certainly it was wrong to steal, everyone knows that—Mamma mia, what a rocket, what a bellezza of stars!—but it was also primarily wrong to dock a jolly boy of his promised half-holiday. No wonder, when the German signor—ah, it was the same, no doubt, as was sick in Antonio's carriage the other day, and refused to pay for a new rug—no wonder, when that fat-head, that pumpkin (for who but a pumpkin would carry a hundred liras about with him?) swam away round the corner of those rocks, that Luigi's hand just paid a visit to his great pockets to see if he was as poor as that miserable tip of twopence seemed to say! Then he found the portfolio, and turned bitter with the thought of the quattro soldi which was all that had been given him for his loss of the half-holiday. Ah, look! Was it really a wheel like that on which Santa Caterina had been bound? How she must have spun round! What giddiness! What burning! A steadfast soul not to have consented to worship Apollo; no wonder that Holy Church made a saint of her. But what could Luigi have done with the portfolio and the note for a hundred liras? He had been searched and on him was nothing found; his room had been searched, but there was nothing there. Was it possible that he was innocent, il povero? Could the sick German gentleman really have lost his foolish pocket-book by natural means as he came up from his bathe? It might be worth while taking a walk there to-morrow, always keeping a peeled eye on the margin of the path. It was possible, after all, that he had lost his pocket-book all by himself, without aid from Luigi, for the hole in his pocket was admitted, and shown to the manager of the Grand Hotel. But then there was Luigi's fatal knowledge of the hole in his pocket. That was very bad; that looked like guilt. If only the boy had held his tongue and not said that fatal thing! He only suggested that there was a hole in his pocket? No, no; he said there was a hole in his pocket, didn't he? What a lesson to keep the tongue still! Luigi had always a lot to learn about keeping the tongue still, for who will soon forget the dreadful things he shouted out last winter at the priest, his mother's cousin's uncle, when he had smacked his head? They were quite true, too, like the hole in the pocket.... Ah, there is the great bomb. Pouf! How it echoes! So the fireworks are over! Buona notte! Buona notte!

All this, while lounging in the Piazza, listening to the band and watching the fireworks, I heard from the tobacconist and the barber and a few other friends. I coupled with this information that which Francis told me as we strolled up homewards again, namely, that he thought he had seen Luigi that afternoon slipping through the garden. He was not sure about it, so leaving it aside, he recalled a few facts about Luigi when he was in his service. He used to hurry over his house-work always, for he preferred his rôle of gardener to all others, and used to wander among the flower-beds, making plants comfortable, and giving this one a drop of water, and that a fresh piece of stick to lean on. Then he would make a mud pie by turning on the cistern tap, and plant verbenas in it, or in more mysterious fashion made caches in a hole behind loose masonry in the cistern wall. Francis has got a just appreciation of the secrecy and rapture of making caches, and never let Luigi know that he was aware of this hidden treasure. But after Luigi had gone home to his mother's of an evening, he would yield to curiosity and see what the boy had put there. Sometimes there would be a matchbox, or a pilfered cigarette, or a piece of string carefully wrapped up in paper.... And now poor Luigi was behind his grated window, and Seraphina, with deepest sarcasm, said that this was what he called bettering himself. He would have done better to have done worse and remained at the Villa Tiberiana in the service of the Signori.

But suddenly next day, like a change in the weather coming from a cloudless sky, a fresh train of thought was suggested by the Luigi-episode, and the mention of the lottery, and how the various incidents and personages bore on the luck of numbers. On the instant Luigi and all he had done or not done ceased to interest anybody except in so far as the events were concerned with the science and interpretation of numbers in the lottery as set forth in the amazing volume called "Smorfia." There you will find what any numeral means, so that should an earthquake occur or an eclipse, the wise speculator looks out "earthquake" or "eclipse" in "Smorfia," and at the next drawing of the National Lottery or the lottery at Naples backs the numbers to which these significations are attached. As it happened, no event of striking local interest had occurred in Alatri since, in April last, the carpenter in the Corso Agosto had unsuccessfully attempted to cut his throat with a razor, after successfully smothering his aunt. This had been the last occasion on which there was clear guidance as to the choice of numbers in the Naples lottery, and nobody of a sporting turn of mind who had the smallest sense of the opportunities life offers had failed to back No. 17, which among other things means "aunt," and numbers which signified "razor," "throat," "blood" and "bolster." Nor had "Smorfia," the dictionary that gives this useful information, disappointed its adherents, for Carmine, Pasqualino's brother, had backed the numbers that meant "throat," "razor," "carpenter," "aunt" and "Sunday," the last being the day on which those distressing events occurred, and went to bed that night to dream of the glories which awaited him who nominated a quinterno secco. (This means that you back five numbers, all of which come out in the order named.) Once, so succulent tradition said, a baker at the Marina had accomplished this enviable feat, after which Alatri saw him no more, for his reward was a million francs, a marquisate and an estate in Calabria, where soon afterwards he was murdered for the sake of his million. This stimulating page of history was not wholly repeated in the case of Carmine and the carpenter's aunt, but by his judicious selection he had certainly reaped two hundred francs where he had only sowed five. The doctor also, who had attended the abortive suicide, had done very well by backing salient features of the tragedy, and astute