Kosinski wrote, and the weeks passed on. A month after Giannoli's arrival in Buenos Ayres I received another letter from him. Once again he declared that he was not safe, that he must take flight. Barelli, of whom he had always spoken with the most brotherly affection, had turned against him. He and other false comrades had entered into a plot to murder him, and at the time of writing he had fled from their ken and was in hiding in some remote and populous district, awaiting the arrival of money which would enable him to return to Europe. Then, later on, there arrived another letter from Lisbon, disconnected in matter, shaky in writing, full of the wildest and most improbable statements. "I feel like a hunted animal," he wrote; "I have been driven about from pillar to post, from one end of the civilised world to another. I am growing very weary of all this, and am trying to devise how to terminate a situation which is growing intolerable. Here I am again in hiding, and dare not venture from my lair till the dead of night. What money I had is almost at an end. My clothes are falling off my back. I have not changed my linen for weeks, having forgotten my old valise in my hurried departure from Buenos Ayres. My health is failing, and I feel utterly helpless and wretched. You would be horrified if you could see me now. I am ill, and at night I can get no sleep. Every moment I expect them to break in, murder me, and seize my papers. Those devils from Buenos Ayres are already on my track. I have not heard from Kosinski. His letter has no doubt been intercepted. As soon as possible I shall proceed to Gibraltar. I am thinking out a plan to end all this. _Do you understand?_" Some weeks later I received from Gibraltar a letter in which Giannoli informed me that yet once more he was compelled to abscond himself, further plottings against him rendering this necessary. He had been seriously ill, he wrote, and his strength was quite giving out. He was, at the time of writing, on the eve of departure for Barcelona, where he was determined "to end it all." He had at last received Kosinski's letter, and would write at greater length from Barcelona. He warned me to beware of false friends. These last sentences troubled me very much. What could it all mean? What was impending? And Kosinski; did he doubt _him_ too? But this state of uncertainty as to his meaning was destined to be but of short duration. Barely a week had elapsed since my receipt of the above letter when, as I stood alone in the composing-room one morning, I was surprised to see the figure of an unknown man appear above the balustrade leading from below. He was evidently a foreigner and a Southerner, and walking straight up to me he asked in Italian, but with a distinct Spanish accent, "Are you Isabel Meredith?" On my answering in the affirmative, he handed me a sealed note on which was written my name in Giannoli's familiar hand.