igh--waved the
Italian flag in the melancholy damp air. Aaron looked at it--the red,
white and green tricolour, with the white cross of Savoy in the centre.
It hung damp and still. And there seemed a curious vacancy in the
city--something empty and depressing in the great human centre. Not that
there was really a lack of people. But the spirit of the town seemed
depressed and empty. It was a national holiday. The Italian flag was
hanging from almost every housefront.

It was about three o'clock in the afternoon. Aaron sat in the restaurant
of the hotel drinking tea, for he was rather tired, and looking through
the thin curtains at the little square outside, where people passed:
little groups of dark, aimless-seeming men, a little bit poorer
looking--perhaps rather shorter in stature--but very much like the
people in any other town. Yet the feeling of the city was so different
from that of London. There seemed a curious emptiness. The rain had
ceased, but the pavements were still wet. There was a tension.

Suddenly there was a noise of two shots, fired in rapid succession.
Aaron turned startled to look into the quiet piazza. And to his
amazement, the pavements were empty, not a soul was in sight. Two
minutes before the place was busy with passers-by, and a newspaper man
selling the Corriere, and little carriages rattling through. Now, as if
by magic, nobody, nothing. It was as if they had all melted into thin
air.

The waiter, too, was peeping behind the curtain. A carriage came
trotting into the square--an odd man took his way alone--the traffic
began to stir once more, and people reappeared as suddenly as they had
disappeared. Then the waiter ran hastily and furtively out and craned
his neck, peering round the square. He spoke with two youths--rather
loutish youths. Then he returned to his duty in the hotel restaurant.

"What was it? What were the shots?" Aaron asked him.

"Oh--somebody shooting at a dog," said the man negligently.

"At a dog!" said Aaron, with round eyes.

He finished his tea, and went out into the town. His hotel was not far
from the cathedral square. Passing through the arcade, he came in sight
of the famous cathedral with its numerous spines pricking into the
afternoon air. He was not as impressed as he should have been. And yet
there was something in the northern city--this big square with all the
trams threading through, the little yellow Continental trams: and the
spiny bulk of the great