quite humbly, cautiously picked his way along
the coping towards the drain-pipe. He reached this pipe and began, in
humiliation, to climb down. It was a real climb down.

Once in the street he was surrounded by the grey uniforms. The soldiers
formed up. The sergeant gave the order. And away they marched, the
dejected youth a prisoner between them.

Then were heard a few scattered yells of derision and protest, a few
shouts of anger and derision against the carabinieri. There were once
more gangs of men and groups of youths along the street. They sent up an
occasional shout. But always over their shoulders, and pretending it was
not they who shouted. They were all cowed and hang-dog once more, and
made not the slightest effort to save the youth. Nevertheless, they
prowled and watched, ready for the next time.

So, away went the prisoner and the grey-green soldiers, and the street
was left to the little gangs and groups of hangdog, discontented men,
all thoroughly out of countenance. The scene was ended.

Aaron looked round, dazed. And then for the first time he noticed, on
the next balcony to his own, two young men: young gentlemen, he would
have said. The one was tall and handsome and well-coloured, might be
Italian. But the other with his pale thin face and his rimless monocle
in his eye, he was surely an Englishman. He was surely one of the
young officers shattered by the war. A look of strange, arch, bird-like
pleasure was on his face at this moment: if one could imagine the
gleaming smile of a white owl over the events that had just passed, this
was the impression produced on Aaron by the face of the young man with
the monocle. The other youth, the ruddy, handsome one, had knitted his
brows in mock distress, and was glancing with a look of shrewd curiosity
at Aaron, and with a look of almost self-satisfied excitement first to
one end of the street, then to the other.

"But imagine, Angus, it's all over!" he said, laying his hand on the arm
of the monocled young man, and making great eyes--not without a shrewd
glance in Aaron's direction.

"Did you see him fall!" replied Angus, with another strange gleam.

"Yes. But was he HURT--?"

"I don't know. I should think so. He fell right back out of that on to
those stones!"

"But how perfectly AWFUL! Did you ever see anything like it?"

"No. It's one of the funniest things I ever did see. I saw nothing quite
like it, even in the war--"

Here Aaron withdrew into