gged with moonlight, and dreaming troubled dreams of
strangely contorted mountains. Then suddenly it waked, for the moon was
sinking, and the charm had lost its potence. The dream-shapes vanished,
and we were in a wide, dark basin, which might be green as emerald by
day. A grey ghost in a long coat, with a rifle slung across his back,
flitted into the road and startled the Countess by signing for us to
stop.

"Oh, mercy! are we going to be held up?" she whispered. "I'd forgotten
about the brigands."

"Only an Italian custom-house brigand," said Terry. "We've got to San
Dalmazzo after all, and it isn't morning yet."

"Yes, but it is!" cried Beechy. "There's a clock striking twelve."

A few minutes later we were driving along a level in the direction of
the monastery-hotel, which was said to be no more than a hundred metres
beyond the village. I had often heard of this hostelry at the little
mountain retreat of San Dalmazzo, loved and sought by Italians in the
summer heat. The arched gateway in the wall was clearly monastic, and we
felt sure that we had come to the right place, when Terry steered the
car through the open portal and a kind of tunnel on the other side.

Before the door of a long, low building he stopped the motor. Its
"thrum, thrum" stilled, the silence of the place was profound, and not a
light gleamed anywhere.

Terry got down and rang. We all waited anxiously, for much as we had
enjoyed the strange night drive, the day had been long, and the chill
of the keen mountain air was in our blood. But nothing happened, and
after a short pause Terry rang again. Silence was the only answer, and
it seemed to give denial rather than consent.

Four times he rang, and by this time the Prince and I were at his back,
striving to pierce the darkness behind the door which was half of glass.
At last a greenish light gleamed dim as a glow-worm in the distance, and
framed in it a figure was visible--the figure of a monk.

For an instant I was half inclined to believe him a ghost, haunting the
scene of past activities, for one does not expect to have the door of an
hotel opened by a monk. But ghosts have no traffic with keys and bolts;
and it was the voice of a man still bound to flesh and blood who greeted
us with a mild "_Buona sera_" which made the night seem young.

Terry responded and announced in his best Italian that we desired
accommodation for the night.

"Ah, I see," exclaimed the monk. "You thought that