some one else!' he began; and then seeing the other's beaming face so near his, and being always ready to be affected by a kind word or a kind look, 'I would serve you if I could, Sor Giovanni,' he added quickly; 'but the fact is—I'm no longer a clerk here. My name was taken off the books this morning. I'm dismissed.'

'Dismissed! Why, lad—why, God bless my soul! what have you been doing then?' cried Sor Giovanni huskily, bringing his hand down heavily upon the table.

Dino's face flushed; he gave a little laugh. 'Ah, that is the question!' he said, turning away with some slight embarrassment and beginning to fasten up his papers: they were letters chiefly.

'It is the question; there I quite agree with you. It is very much the question,' added the head clerk, Sor Checco, coming forward and resting both hands upon the back of the desk. He looked at the young man with a hard glance. 'Before you leave—and, as I had the honour of telling the Director this morning, it is a question of your leaving or of mine,—before you leave you will perhaps have the goodness to explain the nature of those documents which——'

'I shall have the goodness to explain precisely nothing at all,' retorted De Rossi promptly, standing up and thrusting the package of papers into the breast pocket of his coat. With the change of attitude every vestige of hesitation seemed to leave his bearing. 'To you, Sor Giovanni,' he said, looking at him very gratefully, 'I have to express my regret that circumstances prevent my doing you so trifling a service——'

'But—God bless my soul! But I don't understand. Come now, lad, what is the row all about? I don't understand in the least; upon my soul I don't. Why, look here. Here am I, so to speak,'—he unfolded one corner of the checked handkerchief,—'here am I writing my despatches as quiet as a sleeping babe. And there is Sor Checco, poor man! busy in his own corner and thinking of nothing. And here are you——'

Dino smiled. 'Was Sor Checco thinking of nothing? It would be a pity to interrupt him. Besides, to him I have nothing to say. He knows my opinion of him,' the young man added sharply, with a sudden light of indignation flashing in his eyes. 'To the others here,—to my old companions——'

He looked down the long room, but at the sound of his words each head was bent lower over its work. De Rossi's face flushed and turned pale like a girl's. He bit his lip, where the smile seemed suddenly to have grown fixed and unnatural, and turned to a peg on the wall from which was hanging a long gray ulster coat. He took down this coat and put it on, buttoning it across his breast with a deliberation which could not entirely prevent his fingers from trembling. He took down his hat, and stood there for an instant facing the entire room. The light had almost faded away from the small high windows, but there was not a corner of those sordid yellow walls, not a face among those averted faces with which he had not felt familiar. Why, even the chief clerk's fault-finding had its associations with many an old foolish light-hearted joke—he had grown accustomed to the discontent, as a man grows accustomed to the rough handle of his daily tool. 'I wish you a very good afternoon. And—and I'm very much obliged to you for your kindness,' the young fellow said abruptly, turning to Sor Giovanni and putting out his hand. And then yielding to an impulse for which he never quite forgave himself, 'I have worked here every day for the last four years, and there is not a man in this room whom I would not have called my friend,' he said bitterly enough, and put his hat upon his head and walked out of the room before them all.

As he passed before the young clerk to whom he had spoken on first entering, the boy moved uneasily in his chair, muttering some indistinct word; but at the same moment Sor Checco's voice was heard giving a harsh command that the gas be lighted without further delay. 'And 'tis time surely for more light, when we lose so brilliant an example,' added a tall cadaverous-looking youth, who had hitherto sat silent, keeping a small but wary eye upon the stormy countenance of the patron. Dino could remember years after the pang of bitter and impotent resentment which made him start and clench his fist outside there in the long cold corridor at the echo of the sound of their laughter.

It was a cold clear night, with many stars and a piercing March wind, which set the gas lamps flickering in the deserted Via Grande; for it was a Saturday, and all the Jewish shops were closed; and even the few Christian vendors scattered here and there along the street seemed for once to have renounced both orthodoxy and profit, and were for the most part engaged in putting up their shutters with cold and hasty hands. As he turned, with the automatic accuracy of a man going homewards, out of the main thoroughfare into one of those many narrow streets which lie between the Via Grande and the port, it was indeed a wintry blast which struck the young man full in the face making him catch his breath with a gasp and thrust his hands deeper into the pockets of his long thin coat; but what was this violence of the outer air in comparison to that other fiercer storm, that tumult of hurt pride, of wounded disregarded sensibility, the passionate indignation, the hundred mad impulses and promptings which tore at each other and contradicted each other inside his breast? The recollection of his own last words came back to him, and every nerve quivered. He could have struck himself with anger and disgust at his own weakness in having spoken them. 'To have called them—them—my friends,' he muttered half aloud. 'If they were laughing at that!' he thought, and his face grew hot and cold again as he remembered their laughter.

It was not until he had actually quitted the street, and was rapidly running up the dark stair of a narrow building, that another thought seemed to strike him with a sudden power to slacken his impatient footstep and hold him, hesitating, outside a closed door. 'And the mother? what will she say to it all?' he asked himself, and looked at the latch-key in his hand. An expression of mingled weariness and defiance, the expression of a man who expects to find but short and scanty indulgence between the four walls of his home, crossed his face for an instant. He opened the door and went in.

First came a little hall, a mere passageway; beyond that again was a large low room, somewhat empty of furniture, with blackened rafters which divided the ceiling into squares. The walls were whitewashed, scrupulously clean, and quite devoid of character, but here and there a touch of faded colour,—the blurred outline of a flying figure, some heavy tracery of fruit or flower, or line of tarnished gold, still spoke of the original painting of the roof. Facing the door a narrow window led out upon a rickety iron balcony, high hung beneath the eaves of the old house, and from thence in the daytime the view was superb, stretching across the Old Port and the New, over the sea, to the pale vision-like peaks of Carrara.

But to-night the curtain was close drawn. A single oil lamp, with a long wick, was burning on the mantelpiece; its light fell upon the bent gray head of an elderly woman, who was knitting busily, and only occasionally moving a little to cast an anxious glance at the contents of an earthen vessel which stood before the fire.

She looked up, with an air of almost painful suspense in eyes which had once been celebrated for their beauty, and which, even yet, shone clear and dark beneath the troubled brows; she looked up, still holding her knitting with both hands, as her son entered.

'Well, Dino?' she said breathlessly.

'Well, mother. You see I was not mistaken. I thought I should come home rather later to-night,' the young man answered, with an attempt at speaking easily. He came and stood before the fire, spreading out his chilled fingers to the warmth of the blaze. 'It is a cold night. I don't know when I can