he
could not possibly know anything.

"For heaven's sake, Pasquale!" cried Zorzi. "You will certainly be
struck by lightning!"

He had always supposed that the porter hated him, as every one else did,
and he could not understand. By this time he was far more helpless than
he had been just after he had been hurt, and when he tried to move the
injured foot to a more comfortable position it felt like a lump of
scorching lead.

The porter entered upon a final malediction, which might be supposed to
have gathered destructive force by collecting into itself all those that
had gone before, and he directed the whole complex anathema upon the
soul of the coward who had done the foul deed, and upon his mother, his
sisters and his daughters if he had any, and upon the souls of all his
dead relations, men, women and children, and all of his relations that
should ever be born, to the end of time. He had been a sailor in his
youth.

"Who did that to you?" he asked, when he had thus devoted the unknown
offender to everlasting perdition.

"Give me some water, please," said Zorzi, instead of answering the
question.

"Water! Oh yes!" Pasquale went to the earthen jar. "Water! Every devil
in hell, old and young, will jump and laugh for joy when that man asks
for water and has to drink flames!"

Zorzi drank eagerly, though the water was tepid.

"Drink, my son," said Pasquale, holding his head up very tenderly with
one of his rough hands. "I will put more within reach for you to drink,
while I go and get help."

"They have sent for a surgeon," answered Zorzi.

"A surgeon? No surgeon shall come here. A surgeon will divide you into
lengths, fore and aft, and kill you by inches, a length each day, and
for every day he takes to kill you, he will ask a piece of silver of the
master! If a surgeon comes here I will throw him out into the canal.
This is a burn, and it needs an old woman to dress it. Women are evil
beings, a chastisement sent upon us for our sins. But an old woman can
dress a burn. I go. There is the water."

Zorzi called him back when he was already at the door.

"The fire! It must not go down. Put a little wood in, Pasquale!"

The old porter grumbled. It was unnatural that a man so badly hurt
should think of his duties, but in his heart he admired Zorzi all the
more for it. He took some wood, and when Zorzi looked, he was trying to
poke it through the 'bocca.'

"Not there!" cried Zorzi desperately. "The small ope