Comparatively few of this constantly changing company ever think of taking the side street which runs between the high-road to Castellamare and the sea, and it is possible to spend some time at Sorrento without having seen the home of Marion Crawford at all. Follow this side street, called the “rota,” because it curves like the rim of a wheel, and you will find yourself presently going back toward Naples, shut in on either hand by the high walls of villas and gardens, over which the orange and lemon and olive trees look down into the dusty lane. Just across the boundary line between Sorrento and the village of Sant’ Agnello, named after a martial abbot who is said to have fought the Turks, as many a churchman did in his time, there stands a sedate old inn, the Cocumella, or Little Gourd, which is a complete contrast to the two great hotels in the larger town. It was once the property of the Jesuits, and the King Ferdinand of Naples who was Nelson’s friend, nobly generous with the belongings of others, after the manner of kings, gave it, with the adjoining church, to the forefather of its present owner. The house has been an inn ever since, but the title to the church has never been settled, and the building is kept in repair by the landlord as a sort of courtesy to Heaven. To this old-fashioned inn many Italians and quiet English families come for the season, and it was in a cave or grotto at the foot of its garden, which slopes toward the cliff, whence there is a steep descent through the rocks to the sea, that Mr. Crawford wrote “To Leeward” and “Saracinesca,” before he married and bought his present house.