eton, chained to a bed of
stone! That could not be my gay young tennis player, George!

The discovery nauseated me. What did it mean? What _could_ it mean? If
the Donna Marchesi was back of all that misery, what was her motive?

Down the long cave-like room I went. There seemed to be no end to it,
though many of the columns were surrounded with empty chains. Only those
near the door had their human flies in the trap. In the opposite
direction the rows of pillars stretched into a far oblivion. I thought
that at the end there was the black mouth of a tunnel, but I could not
be sure and dared not go that far to explore the truth. Then, out of
that tunnel, I heard a voice come, a singing voice. Slipping my shoes
off, I ran back near the door and hid as best I could in a dark recess,
back of a far piece of stone. I stood there in the darkness, my torch
out, the handle of the revolver in my hand.

The singing grew louder and louder, and then the singer came into view.
It was none other than Donna Marchesi! She carried a lantern in one hand
and a basket in the other. Hanging the lantern on a nail, she took the
basket and went from one sleeping man to another. With each her
performance was the same; she awakened them with a kick in the face, and
then, when they sat up crying with pain, she placed a hard roll of bread
in their blind, trembling, outstretched hand. With all fed, there was
silence save for gnawing teeth breaking through the hard crusts. The
poor devils were hungry, starving slowly to death, and how they wolfed
the bread! She laughed with animal delight as they cried for more.
Standing under the lamp, a lovely devil in her decollete dress, she
laughed at them. I swear I saw her yellow eyes, dilated in the
semi-darkness!

Suddenly she gave the command,

"Up! you dogs, _up_!"

* * * * *

Like well-trained animals they rose to their feet, clumsily, but as fast
as they could under the handicap of trembling limbs and heavy chains.
Two were slow in obeying, and those she struck across the face with a
small whip, till they whined with pain.

They stood there in silence, twenty odd blind men, chained against as
many pillars of stone; and then the woman, standing in the middle of
them, started to sing. It was a well-trained voice, but metallic, and
her high notes had in them the cry of a wild animal. No feminine
softness there. She sang from an Italian opera, and I knew that I had
hea