orn hope with such ground tackle as he had
in his chain lockers. And then he had stood out, and had sailed away,
one danger more behind him in his hard life, and one less ahead. He had
sailed away--whither? No one could tell. Those little vessels, built in
the south of Italy, often enough take salt to South America, and are
sold there, cargo and all; and some of the crew stay there, and some get
other ships, but almost all are dispersed. The keeper of the San Lorenzo
tower, who had been a deep-water man, had told Aurora about it. He
himself had once gone out in a Sicilian brigantine from Trapani, and had
stayed away three years, knocking about the world in all sorts of craft.

Yet this one might have been on a coastwise trip to Genoa and
Marseilles. That was quite possible. If one could only find out her
name. And yet, if she had put into a near port Marcello would have come
back; for Aurora was quite sure that he had got on board her somehow. It
was all a mystery, all but the certainty she felt that he was still
alive, and which nothing could shake, even when every one else had given
him up. Aurora begged her mother to speak to Corbario about it. With his
experience and knowledge of things he would know what to do; he could
find some way of tracing the vessel, wherever she might be.

The Contessa was convinced that the girl's theory was utterly untenable,
and it was only to please her that she promised to speak of it if she
saw Corbario again. Soon afterward she decided to leave Rome for the
summer, and before going away she went once more to the villa. It was
now late in June, and she found Folco in the garden late in the
afternoon.

He looked ill and tired, but she thought him a little less thin than
when she had seen him last. He said that he, too, meant to leave Rome
within a few days, that he intended to go northward first to see an old
friend of his who had recently returned from South America, and that he
should afterwards go down to Calabria, to San Domenico, and spend the
autumn there. He had no news of Marcello. He looked thoughtfully down at
his hands as he said this in a tone of profound sorrow.

"Aurora has a fixed idea," said Maddalena. "While she was talking with
Marcello at the gap in the bank there was a small ship tossing about not
far from the shore."

"Well?" asked Corbario. "What of it?"

As he looked up from the contemplation of his hands Maddalena was struck
by his extreme pallor and the te