all marry, and
our wives must have homes. Besides, sometimes we are lazy and don't
work. One must have some pleasure, you know."

"Would you like to enter service?"

"No, signor. We prefer being our own masters; to take a fare or leave
it as we please."

"Your boat is a very fast one. You went at a tremendous rate when the
galley was after us the other night."

"The boat is like others," Giuseppi said carelessly; "but most men can
row fast when the alternative is ten ducats one way or a prison the
other."

"Then there would be no place where I could always find you in the
daytime if I wanted you?"

"No, signor; there would be no saying where we might be. We have
sometimes regular customers, and it would not pay us to disappoint
them, even if you paid us five times the ordinary fare. But we could
always meet you at night anywhere, when you choose to appoint."

"But how can I appoint," the passenger said irritably, "if I don't know
where to find you?"

Giuseppi was silent for a stroke or two.

"If your excellency would write in figures, half past ten or eleven, or
whatever time we should meet you, just at the base of the column of the
palace--the corner one on the Piazzetta--we should be sure to be there
sometime or other during the day, and would look for it."

"You can read and write, then?" the passenger asked.

"I cannot do that, signor," Giuseppi said, "but I can make out figures.
That is necessary to us, as how else could we keep time with our
customers? We can read the sundials, as everyone else can; but as to
reading and writing, that is not for poor lads like us."

The stranger was satisfied. Certainly every one could read the
sundials; and the gondoliers would, as they said, understand his
figures if he wrote them.

"Very well," he said. "It is probable I shall generally know, each time
I discharge you, when I shall want you again; but should there be any
change, I will make the figures on the base of the column at the corner
of the Piazzetta, and that will mean the hour at which you are to meet
me that night at the usual place."

Nothing more was said, until the gondola arrived at the same spot at
which it had landed the passenger on the previous occasion.

"I shall be back in about the same time as before," the fare said when
he alighted.

As he strode away into the darkness, Francis followed him. He was
shoeless, for at that time the lower class seldom wore any protection
to the feet, un