Picardino! And then, of course, I could read so many things clearly which before had been covered in shadow. It was Picardino who had set fire to the _Snow Man_. It was Dirk who had been on his track and had frightened him in the night when my father had returned and whistled to me. It was Picardino who had seen my father rush into the burning building, and had heard my cry of "Daddy, dad-_dee_!" as I ran up through the crowd. He had kept the scene in his memory and had planned the ruse that had trapped my father at last. It was Picardino too who had drawn both Dirk and Worthing to Naples. It wasn't luck merely that had brought about the fatal error. For it was outside Picardino's lodging that Worthing's uncle had been waiting for his quarry, and had found me instead. And yet I couldn't help the thought that it was Picardino who would have sheltered me after he had killed my father, and who had brought me Jenny's message, so that in my gratitude I had even embraced him. My father he had hated to the death, but me he had loved; of that I felt certain. Perhaps that was why he had been so unwilling to strike. Perhaps even at the end it had paralysed the blow which might so easily have fallen on my unprotected heart. Picardino! I gazed at him in a mist of sadness and wonder, till the face seemed to change again. Indeed in life as he had gazed from Dirk to me I had noticed its shifting mobility of expression, and in death it seemed to be settling back through all its stages from the hate that had last inspired it to whatever might have been its ruling emotion in life. Now the amusement was yielding to a calm and serene content. And of a sudden it was no longer the face of Picardino, but the face of Abou that stared up at me. In spite of all absence of that mighty beard which had veiled the living Abou, I knew him now as he lay dead. Dimly I remembered how Dirk had said that the fellow had more shapes than a cloud and more voices than the wind.