hine flooding through the open windows across
the bare floor, we spread our luncheon on a table covered with coarse
but snowy homespun, and decked with remarkable plates in brilliant hues
and still more brilliant designs. The luncheon was accompanied by
several bottles of "the good little white wine" of the neighborhood--an
accompaniment we had learned to appreciate.

Upon the chimney-piece of a room adjoining ours, whose door stood open,
there was an old brass lamp. In shape it was not unlike a high
candlestick crowned with an oval reservoir for oil, which had three
little curving tubes for wicks, and an upright handle above ending in a
ring; it was about a foot and a half high, and from it hung three brass
chains holding a brass lamp-scissors and little brass extinguishers.
Mrs. Clary, Mrs. Trescott, Miss Graves, Miss Elaine, and myself all
admired this lamp as we strolled about the rooms after luncheon before
starting for the castle. It happened that Janet was not there; she had
gone, by an unusual chance, with Lloyd, to look at some cinque-cento
frescos in an old church somewhere, and was, I have no doubt, deeply
interested in them. When she returned she too spied the old lamp, and
admired it. "I wish I had it for my own room at home," she exclaimed. "I
feel sure it is Aladdin's."

[Illustration: DOLCE ACQUA]

"Come, come, Janet," called Mrs. Trescott from below. "The castle
waits."

"It has waited some time already," said Inness--"a matter of six or
seven centuries, I believe."

"And looks as though it would wait six or seven more," I said, as we
stood on the arched bridge admiring the massive walls above.

"It has withstood numerous attacks," said the Professor. "Genoese armies
came up this valley more than once to take it, and went back
unsuccessful."

"To me it is more especially distinguished by _not_ having been a home
of the Lascaris," said Baker.

"To whom, then, did it belong?" said Janet, contemptuously.

We all, in a chorus, answered grandly, "To the Dorias!" (We were so glad
to have reached a name we knew.)

The castle crowned the summit of a crag, ruined but imposing; in shape a
parallelogram, it had in front square towers, five stories in height,
pierced with round-arched windows. It was the finest as well as largest
ruin we lately landed Americans had seen, and we went hither and thither
with much animation, telling each other all we knew, and much that we
did not know, about ruined tower