to get home now would be straight down the mountain to
Grotta del Monte--he pointed out the brown-tiled roofs of a village far
below them--there they could find donkeys or an ox-cart to take them
back. It was nine kilometres to Valedolmo. They had come quite out of
their way; if they had taken the right path in the morning they would
have reached the top where the view was magnificant--truly magnificant.
It was a pity to miss it. Perhaps some other day they would like to come
again and he himself would be pleased to guide them. He shook hands and
wished them a pleasant journey. They would best hurry a trifle, he added,
for darkness came fast and when one got caught on the mountain at
night--he shrugged his shoulders and looked at Tony--one needed a guide
who knew his business.

They had walked for ten minutes when they heard someone shouting behind
and found a young man calling to them to wait. He caught up with them and
breathlessly explained.

Pasquale had told him that they were foreigners from America who were
climbing the mountain for diversion and who had lost their way. He was
going down to the village himself and would be pleased to guide them.

He fell into step beside Constance and commenced asking questions, while
Tony, as the path was narrow, perforce fell behind. Occasionally
Constance translated, but usually she laughed without translating, and
Tony, for the twentieth time, found himself hating the Italian language.

The young man's questions were refreshingly ingenuous. He was curious
about America, since he was thinking, he said, of becoming an American
himself some day. He knew a man once who had gone to America to live and
had made a fortune there--but yes a large fortune--ten thousand lire in
four years. Perhaps the signorina knew him--Giuseppe Motta; he lived in
Buenos Aires. And what did it look like--America? How was it different
from Italy?

Constance described the skyscrapers in New York.

His wonder was intense. A building twenty stories high! _Dio mio_! He
should hate to mount himself up all those stairs. Were the buildings like
that in the country too? Did the shepherds live in houses twenty stories
high?

"Oh no," she laughed. "In the country the houses are just like these only
they are made of wood instead of stone."

"Of wood?" He opened his eyes. "But signorina, do they never burn?"

He had another question to ask. He had been told--though of course he did
not believe it--that t