nny-plain-and-two-pence-colored. This cave gave upon the sweetest
little thing in coves, all deep blue water and honest rocks; and here I
looked after the vineyard shipping, a pot-bellied tub with a brown
sail, and a sort of dingy. The tub took the wine to Naples, and the
dingy was the tub's tender.

"The house above was said to be on the identical site of a suburban
retreat of the admirable Tiberius; there was the old sinner's private
theatre with the tiers cut clean to this day, the well where he used to
fatten his lampreys on his slaves, and a ruined temple of those
ripping old Roman bricks, shallow as dominoes and ruddier than the
cherry. I never was much of an antiquary, but I could have become one
there if I'd had nothing else to do; but I had lots. When I wasn't
busy with the boats I had to trim the vines, or gather the grapes, or
even help make the wine itself in a cool, dark, musty vault underneath
the temple, that I can see and smell as I jaw. And can't I hear it and
feel it too! Squish, squash, bubble; squash, squish, guggle; and your
feet as though you had been wading through slaughter to a throne. Yes,
Bunny, you mightn't think it, but this good right foot, that never was
on the wrong side of the crease when the ball left my hand, has also
been known to

'crush the lees of pleasure
From sanguine grapes of pain.'"

He made a sudden pause, as though he had stumbled on the truth in jest.
His face filled with lines. We were sitting in the room that had been
bare when first I saw it; there were basket-chairs and a table in it
now, all meant ostensibly for me; and hence Raffles would slip to his
bed, with schoolboy relish, at every tinkle of the bell. This
afternoon we felt fairly safe, for Theobald had called in the morning,
and Mrs. Theobald still took up much of his time. Through the open
window we could hear the piano-organ and "Mar--gar--ri" a few hundred
yards further on. I fancied Raffles was listening to it while he
paused. He shook his head abstractedly when I handed him the
cigarettes; and his tone hereafter was never just what it had been.

"I don't know, Bunny, whether you're a believer in transmigration of
souls. I have often thought it easier to believe than lots of other
things, and I have been pretty near believing in it myself since I had
my being on that villa of Tiberius. The brute who had it in my day, if
he isn't still running it with a whole skin, was or