He was a fine-looking man of about thirty, with a dark, pointed beard and waxed moustaches. We rode on together up the hill, and fell into conversation. He inquired where I was from, and my destination, to which I replied that I was travelling for pleasure. He told me that he was a vine-grower living in Marengo, and that he was returning from a business visit to Cremona. When we stopped for water at a roadside spring, he asked me to carry a small pair of saddlebags, as his horse was tired out. I complied cheerfully, and we pushed on up the steep road. Arrived at the top, he took a cross-road, remarking that he believed we should reach the _albergo_ of Padrone Vincenti before the moon rose. I found him a pleasant, entertaining Italian, and being, no doubt, conceited, imagined that he found me the same. It was dusk when we rode up to a ruined villa, high upon the mountain-side—vast, crumbling, desolate. It was one of those old villas, of which there are hundreds in Italy, standing on their pale olive slopes. Those who are strange to them see only the peeling plaster, the discoloured stone, the desolate courts, the grass-grown flags, the broken statues, the straying, unkempt vines, the look of utter loneliness and decay. But those who know them well, love them and learn otherwise; learn the infinite charm of the silent halls, of the endless echoing corridors, of the wide, frescoed, wind-swept, and sun-bathed chambers, and of the shadowy logge where the roseglow of the oleander burns in the dimness of the arches, and the lizards bask in the sunlight. It was charmingly situated. The old place had once belonged to a great family, but was now half-ruined; the few rooms remaining intact having been transformed into an inn. As we rode up to the porch, a slender girl of about seventeen, with big black eyes, and dark hair coiled tightly, fastened with a Genoese filigree pin, came running round the corner of the house. She looked as wild as the goats on the mountain-side, and my first thought was, “What a beauty she will some day be!” I raised my wide-brimmed sun hat, and asked if we could obtain accommodation for the night. “I don’t know,” she said shortly. “But I will ask father,” and she darted into the house. A moment later an old man made his appearance, rubbing his hands and smiling benignly. “How are you, signori?” he asked in his _patois_. “Want to stop? Very well. Here, Ninetta, call Giovanni to take the horses.” I had just dismounted, and started to remove the saddlebags, when a glance at my travelling companion checked me. He was gazing down the road and listening intently. I saw an anxious look overspread his face. The next moment he stuck spurs into his horse, and, without a word galloped down the road in the opposite direction in the gathering gloom.