"Oh no; Peppino is nearly sixty. She is only twenty-five, though she looks thirty. She is a widow, and she is thinking of taking another husband before long. Have you noticed a young fellow working in the vineyard just under your windows?" "I have noticed some one loafing there." "That's the man." "Poor good-natured woman--he has imposed upon her; she will have to earn his living as well as her own. As it happens, I have watched him, and a lazier creature I never saw; he looks at the vines occasionally, and he calls down jokes to the other men below; that is the extent of his exertions. Come out for a walk." "I don't walk after dinner." "Come at least as far as the tower." Thus adjured, Dennison rose. In spite of his own assertion, he was not corpulent; he was a tall man whose outlines had grown large; but he was muscular still. Gray also was tall. If Edward Gray had a hobby, it was to show to the world that an American business-man can be as athletic as an English fox-hunter or an ancient Greek; his face, which was thin and deeply lined, did not come up to his ambition; but his erect figure, wiry and elastic, was well-developed and strong. As they passed through the house, now growing dim in the twilight, they caught a glimpse of the waitress in the distance, seated in the kitchen, knitting. On the table by her side two of the tall, slender Tuscan lamps were burning, each with its three little wicks and its three brass chains; in her lap two kittens were curled asleep. The light illumined also a gaudy print on the wall, apparently a Madonna. Beneath the print was a jug filled with flowers. "Is that little piece of piety your cook's?" Gray asked, as they passed out. "No. The cook is a free-thinker. It's Modesta; she is overwhelmingly devout. She has the whole house blessed at regular intervals--priest and holy-water." The outer door of Casa Colombina opens directly upon the small square or piazza of Santa Lucia, a grassy space dotted with minute pink daisies. One side of this square is bordered by a low wall. In the daytime this wall's broad, flat top was adorned not infrequently by the recumbent figure of one of Modesta's protégés, who, after enjoying her bounty, was taking a siesta here, in the sunshine or the shade, according to the season; sometimes it was Hannibal, with his nose on his paws; sometimes it was the cat; very often it was a beggar or the idiot boy. To-night the slab was empty, and, after a stroll of half an hour up the road and back, Dennison and his visitor sat down here for a moment; it made an excellent seat. It was now dark; the lights of Tre Ponti were twinkling in the valley, the evening-star shone above the Tower of the Dove; the soft air of the Italian May was filled with the fragrance of blossoms. Suddenly on one of the mountains in the northern sky there appeared, flashing out, a gleam. Then a blaze. "Woods on fire up there," said Gray, who was accustomed to forest fires at home.