ide. "Is he not a bore, and the worst of all bores too,--a
quarrelsome one?"

"I 'm not so sure of that, Charley. It was plain he did n't fancy our
laughing so heartily, and wanted an explanation which he saw no means
of asking for; and it was, perhaps, as a sort of reprisal he made that
boastful speech; but I am deeply mistaken if there be not much to like
and respect in that man's nature."

"There may be some grains of gold in the mud of the Arno there, if
any one would spend a life to search for them," said the youth,
contemptuously. And with this ungracious speech the conversation closed,
and they walked on in silence.

CHAPTER II. THE VILLA CAPRINI

It was a few days after the brief scene we have just recorded that the
two Englishmen were seated, after sunset, on a little terraced plateau
in front of an antiquated villa. As they are destined to be intimate
acquaintances of our reader in this tale, let us introduce them by
name,--Sir William Heathcote and his son Charles.

With an adherence to national tastes which are rapidly fading away, they
were enjoying their wine after dinner, and the spot they had selected
for it was well chosen. From the terrace where they sat, a perfect maze
of richly wooded glens could be seen, crossing and recrossing each other
in every direction. From the depths of some arose the light spray of
boiling mountain torrents; others, less wild in character, were marked
by the blue smoke curling up from some humble homestead. Many a zigzag
path of trellis-vines straggled up the hillsides, now half buried in
olives, now emerging in all the grotesque beauty of its own wayward
course. The tall maize and the red lucerne grew luxuriously beneath the
fig and the pomegranate, while here and there the rich soil, rent with
heat, seemed unable to conceal its affluence, and showed the yellow
gourds and the melons bursting up through the fruitful earth. It was
such a scene as at once combined Italian luxuriance with the verdant
freshness of a Tyrol landscape, and of which the little territory that
once called itself the Duchy of Lucca can boast many instances.

As background to the picture, the tall mountains of Carrara, lofty
enough to be called Alps, rose, snow-capped and jagged in the distance,
and upon their summits the last rays of the setting sun now glowed with
the ruddy brilliancy of a carbuncle.

These Italian landscapes win one thoroughly from all other scenery,
after a time. At fi