the
brickwork. Piero laughed.

"He is a dancer!" he cried. "He is a 'ballarino'!" The others all
laughed, too, and the name remained his as long as he lived--he was
Zorzi Ballarin.

The old foreman came to help him, seeing that he was really injured, for
no one had quite realised it at first. Savagely as they hated him, the
workmen would not have tortured him, though they might have killed him
outright if they had dared. Excepting Piero and the man who had hurt
him, the workmen all went on with their work.

He was ghastly pale, and great drops of sweat rolled down his forehead
as he reached the foreman's chair and sat down: but after the first cry
he had uttered, he made no sound. The foreman could hear how his teeth
ground upon each other as he mastered the frightful suffering. Giovanni
came, and stood looking at the helpless foot, smashed by the weight that
had fallen upon it and burned to the bone in an instant by the molten
glass.

"I cannot walk," he said at last to the foreman. "Will you help me?"

His voice was steady but weak. The foreman and Giovanni helped him to
stand on his left foot, and putting his arms round their necks he swung
himself along as he could. The dark man had picked up his blow-pipe and
was at work again.

"You will pay for that when the master comes back," Piero said to him as
Zorzi passed. "You will starve if you are not careful."

Zorzi turned his head and looked the dark man full in the eyes.

"It was an accident," he said faintly. "You did not mean to do it."

The man looked away shamefacedly, for he knew that even if he had not
meant to injure Zorzi for life, he had meant to hurt him if he could.

As for Giovanni, he was puzzled by all that had happened so
unexpectedly, for he was a dull man, though very keen for gain, and he
did not understand human nature. He disliked Zorzi, but during the
morning he had become convinced that the gifted young artist was a
valuable piece of property, and not, as he had supposed, a clever
flatterer who had wormed himself into old Beroviero's confidence. A man
who could make such things was worth much money to his master. There
were kings and princes, from the Pope to the Emperor, who would have
given a round sum in gold for the beautiful ampulla of which only a heap
of tiny fragments were now left to be swept away.

The two men brought Zorzi across the garden to the door of the
laboratory. Leaning heavily on the foreman he got the key out,