n its senility, but
intolerably sad. He made no reply to our timid salutations, but motioned
tremblingly to us to enter; and with a last "good-night" to Giuseppe we
obeyed, and stood half-way up the stone stairs that led directly from
the door, while the old man tediously shot every bolt and adjusted the
heavy bar.

Then we followed him in the semi-darkness up the steps into what had
been the great hall of the villa. A fire was burning in a great
fireplace so beautiful in design that Tom and I looked at each other
with interest. By its fitful light we could see that we were in a huge
circular room covered by a flat, saucer-shaped dome,--a room that must
once have been superb and splendid, but that now was a lamentable wreck.
The frescoes on the dome were stained and mildewed, and here and there
the plaster was gone altogether; the carved doorways that led out on all
sides had lost half the gold with which they had once been covered, and
the floor was of brick, sunken into treacherous valleys. Rough chests,
piles of old newspapers, fragments of harnesses, farm implements, a heap
of rusty carbines and cutlasses, nameless litter of every possible kind,
made the room into a wilderness which under the firelight seemed even
more picturesque than it really was. And on this inexpressible confusion
of lumber the pale shapes of the seventeenth-century nymphs, startling
in their weather-stained nudity, looked down with vacant smiles.

For a few moments we warmed ourselves before the fire; and then, in the
same dejected silence, the old man led the way to one of the many doors,
handed us a brass lamp, and with a stiff bow turned his back on us.

Once in our room alone, Tom and I looked at each other with faces that
expressed the most complex emotions.

"Well, of all the rum goes," said Tom, "this is the rummiest go I ever
experienced!"

"Right, my boy; as you very justly remark, we are in for it. Help me
shut this door, and then we will reconnoitre, take account of stock, and
size up our chances."

But the door showed no sign of closing; it grated on the brick floor and
stuck in the warped casing, and it took our united efforts to jam the
two inches of oak into its place, and turn the enormous old key in its
rusty lock.

"Better now, much better now," said Tom; "now let us see where we are."

The room was easily twenty-five feet square, and high in proportion;
evidently it had been a state apartment, for the walls were cov