square battlemented tower, one hundred and thirty feet high, named Torre Colombina, or Tower of the Dove. This tower is now occupied only by owls, and travellers suppose vaguely that it belongs in some way to the little church of Santa Lucia, which nestles at its feet; they even fancy that it is the campanile for Santa Lucia's bells. But the great stone Tower of the Dove dates from the thirteenth century, and although Santa Lucia cannot be called young, her two hundred and fifty years are nothing to the greater antiquity of her ponderous, overshadowing neighbor. Santa Lucia's bells, indeed, would be lost in the Tower of the Dove. The saint has but three, each twelve inches in length, and the miniature peal is suspended in a belfry about as large as a pigeon-house which perches on the roof of her own small temple--a yellow sanctuary adorned with a flat pointed façade which looks (it is a characteristic of many church façades in Italy) as if it would come up and off if pulled strongly at the top, like the front of a box or the slide of a lantern. Edward Gray's compliment had drawn from Dennison a disparaging "Oh, it's all dilapidated, forlorn--" "Spare your adjectives," responded the other man. "They're pure hypocrisy. You needn't pretend you don't like it!" "Of course I don't pretend. Haven't I lived here for nearly twenty years because I do like it? That tells the story." "Though my occupation at home is the making of boiler-plate," Gray continued, pursuing the current of his own thoughts, "and though I couldn't and wouldn't live here as you do, giving up your own country (the greatest country in the world), yet don't imagine, Jack, that I can't take it in!" He had risen while speaking. Now he went down to the parapet and stood looking at the view. Each mountain-peak was bathed in the light of sunset; all was softly fair--the ineffable loveliness of Italy. He came back. "It's probable that I take it in more than you do," he went on. "Oh yes, of course; new-comers always think so. They think that we don't comprehend either the country or the people because we take them calmly. They believe that they themselves show far more discrimination in only coming now and then. For in that way they preserve their power of appreciating; they don't grow dull-eyed and stupid as we do." "Exactly. That's just what I think," answered Gray. "What do you suppose those stairs were for?" he added, as he sat down again beside the table and lighted a cigarette. "Probably they led to a small out-door pulpit which has fallen down. The whole top of this hill was covered by a monastery--a fortified place, I believe, with four towers. Only one of the towers remains, and nothing above ground of all the other buildings but that piece of high wall; I dare say there are plenty of substructures and vaults below. But though the monastery has gone, this old garden of the monks remains very much as it was, I fancy."