it might befall; that
he was graduated a candidate for the right clubs, that he took to stocks
so naturally that he quickly and safely increased an ample inherited
fortune, and this without neglecting horse, or rod, or gun; finally that
he carried into maturity a fine boyish ease--when this has been said all
has been told about Morton Crocker except the whimsical chance that made
him an Italianate.

Some reminiscence of his grand tour had beguiled a tedious convalescence
and, following the gleam for want of more serious occupation, he had set
sail for Naples with a motor-car in the hold. At thirty-three he brought
the keenness of a girl to the galleries, the towns, and the ineffable
whole thing. It was Tuscany that completed his capture. He bought a villa
and, as his strength came back, began to add new vineyards and orchards
to his estate. But this was his play; his serious work became collecting
and more particularly, as has been hinted, the quest of the missing St.
Michael. When he learned, as a man of means soon must, that good pictures
may still be bought in Italy, he promptly succumbed to the covetousness
of the collector, and the motor-car became predatory. Its tonneau had
contained surreptitious Lottos and Carpaccios. Its gyrations became an
object of interest to the Ministry of Public Instruction. Once on
crossing the Alps it had been searched to the linings. While Crocker had
his ups and downs as a collector, from the first his sense of reality
stood him in stead. Being a Bostonian he naturally studied, but even
before he at all knew why, he disregarded the pastiches and forgeries,
and made unhesitatingly for the good panel in an array of rubbish.

It was this sense for reality that impelled him to settle where the rest
of us merely perched. Fifty _contadini_ tilled his domain and actually
began to earn out the costly improvements he had introduced. His wine and
oil were sought by those who knew and were willing to pay. In the
intervals of the major passion Crocker walked up and down the grassy
roads superintending the larger operations. His muscular and hulking
blondness--he had rowed four years--towered above the dark little men who
served, feared, and worshipped him. Unlike the rest of us who preferred
to live in a delightful Cloud Cuckoo Town, which happened to be Florence
also, he had chosen to take root in Tuscany.

First he purged his castellated villa of the international abuses it had
undergone for