But my father wasn't in the least disconcerted, returning the embrace with unction; and freeing himself he fingered at the guitar, at first with some diffidence, but soon growing more confident, striking the chords boldly or rippling out the arpeggios. He hesitated a moment before launching into a song, and then began on an old sea chantey: "In Plymouth Town there lived a maid, Bless you young women; In Plymouth Town there lived a maid, Now mind what I do say; In Plymouth Town there lived a maid, And she was mistress of her trade; I'll go no more a ro--o--ving With you--fair--maid." We must have been a good day's journey from the sea, but the company seemed to know the song and caught up the chorus: "A ro--ving, a ro--ving, Since roving's been my ru--i--in, I'll go no more a ro--o--ving With you--fair--maid." And this was the beginning of a merry contest, the guitar passing from the Italian to my father and back again, my father usually singing some gay sailor ditty, and Picardino some wavering high-pitched song of love. I listened delighted. Also Picardino, in his quaint English, was a wonderful chatterbox, full of stories of the road; and I found myself at times half wishing I might join him in his wanderings, and share some of his adventures of frolic and danger over the ways of France and Italy and Spain. I remember when I awoke from such dreams to reality I glanced toward my father feeling guilty of a kind of treason, and he seemed to be eyeing me darkly as though half divining my thought; till in penitence lest I had wounded him I stole up to him, and clasping his hand said, "I wouldn't, daddy; I really wouldn't." "Wouldn't what?" he asked uncomprehendingly. "I wouldn't go with him; I wouldn't really." My father gazed at me rather dreamily for a minute, and suddenly seeming to awake laughed and said, "Oh, that, Tommy. No, of course not; of course not." But I thought he didn't know either what he was saying or what I meant. I felt relieved. Meanwhile Picardino was telling of a strange adventure in the north from where he had just come, as he said, followed by "terreeble voices, ach! so cru-ell, so chill, that my hair it stand upon its end, and my hearrt it knock like so"; at which he beat a rat-tat upon the table. It seemed that upon a lonely space of moor he had arrived one evening at a huge grey house, but on knocking for admittance no one had answered him. He was tired and hungry, and could see no village near where he could rest, so he had continued to knock, till slowly growing out of the hollow house he had become aware of a low and sorrowful moaning, "like one lost soul, for everr and for everr bound to a beeg wheel of pain." As he told his story his eyes started from his head, and his hair seemed to stiffen about his neck.