partly with small
woman's-ware, such as thread and pins, and partly with fragments of
glass, which had probably been taken in exchange for those commodities.

"Young man," he said, pointing to a ring on the finger of the reclining
figure, "when your chin has got a stiffer crop on it, you'll know better
than to take your nap in street-corners with a ring like that on your
forefinger. By the holy 'vangels! if it had been anybody but me
standing over you two minutes ago--but Bratti Ferravecchi is not the man
to steal. The cat couldn't eat her mouse if she didn't catch it alive,
and Bratti couldn't relish gain if it had no taste of a bargain. Why,
young man, one San Giovanni, three years ago, the Saint sent a dead body
in my way--a blind beggar, with his cap well-lined with pieces--but, if
you'll believe me, my stomach turned against the money I'd never
bargained for, till it came into my head that San Giovanni owed me the
pieces for what I spend yearly at the Festa; besides, I buried the body
and paid for a mass--and so I saw it was a fair bargain. But how comes
a young man like you, with the face of Messer San Michele, to be
sleeping on a stone bed with the wind for a curtain?"

The deep guttural sounds of the speaker were scarcely intelligible to
the newly-waked, bewildered listener, but he understood the action of
pointing to his ring: he looked down at it, and, with a half-automatic
obedience to the warning, took it off and thrust it within his doublet,
rising at the same time and stretching himself.

"Your tunic and hose match ill with that jewel, young man," said Bratti,
deliberately. "Anybody might say the saints had sent _you_ a dead body;
but if you took the jewels, I hope you buried him--and you can afford a
mass or two for him into the bargain."

Something like a painful thrill appeared to dart through the frame of
the listener, and arrest the careless stretching of his arms and chest.
For an instant he turned on Bratti with a sharp frown; but he
immediately recovered an air of indifference, took off the red Levantine
cap which hung like a great purse over his left ear, pushed back his
long dark-brown curls, and glancing at his dress, said, smilingly--

"You speak truth, friend: my garments are as weather-stained as an old
sail, and they are not old either, only, like an old sail, they have had
a sprinkling of the sea as well as the rain. The fact is, I'm a
stranger in Florence, and when I came in foo