The evening before the day we were to go aboard, we went for a trip outside the city to get a little rest and recreation before encountering the ordeal of going through the Capitaneria and embarking. I saw by the roadside a party of emigrants from one of the villages back of Naples, who were driving in with huge carts, and had stopped, possibly for the night. They were the poorest that I had yet seen, and two old women, whom I observed, I felt sure would be refused by the doctors on their general physical condition. On our way home we changed cars in the San Fernandino, and as we stood waiting I noticed an evil-looking “bravo-like” sort of a chap eyeing me closely, and I moved away from the remainder of the party in order to see if he would approach me. I found I was right in my estimate of him. He evidently took me for a returned emigrant with good American dollars in my pocket, for he came over, walked along slowly behind me, slapped me on the shoulder, and said in English,— “Hello, John!” “Che?” I answered, feigning stupidity and half-recognition as I turned toward him. Then he came out with the old, old, very old confidence game. He asked me where he had seen me last. I surmised it was in Pittsburg; and he was at once sure it was, and we chatted on in Italian, or rather I answered merely enough to keep my lingual discrepancies from being observed. Just then another of his sort came along and inquired the way to a near-by street, showing a fifty-lire note, and saying he had been sent by a man to deliver it, and was so unfamiliar with Naples he had lost his way. Thief Number One winked at me and said in English: “Come on, John, we get dat moneys.” “How?” said I. Thief Number Two was staring around at the buildings to give Thief Number One full chance with me. This worthy made a quick sign of playing cards. I saw the car approaching which I wanted our people to take, and so, to end matters, I turned him “the sign of the thumb,”[1] a signal of the freemasonry of thieves which I had picked up long before in the Italian quarter in New York, and at it the words died on his lips. The other man caught it too, and his eyes got very wide with surprise, then suddenly narrowed and darkened. Both responded with lightning-like signals that were so near to natural movements of the right hand that if both had not done it I would not have known it was a signal, and when I could not respond in kind they darted away as if from sudden death. Footnote 1: The sign of the thumb is a quick motion of the hand by turning the whole hand palm up, fingers half closed and thumb out. It is a very general sign of suspicion of a third party or of confidence between two. If I had gone with Number One in the first place to try to fleece Number Two, there would have been another case for the Naples police of the “mysterious disappearance” of a returned emigrant. I could not long have concealed my nationality, and that might perhaps have saved me.