face homeward, always with my minute attendant whom I would gladly have shaken as he was laughing and chattering and repeating twenty times, "non c'è pericolo." I think the going down was rather worse; I had the rain in my face, heard all the same unearthly noises around me, and from time to time had glimpses of the whole country-side--Naples, the little villages, the islands, the bay standing out well in the red light thrown on them by the flames from the crater; then absolute darkness and stillness, nothing apparently on the mountain but me and the donkey scrambling and stumbling over the wet, slippery stones. How we ever got down to the inn I don't know, but both boy and donkey seemed to know the road. I was thankful when we emerged on a sort of terrace and saw a faint light, which meant the little inn. The boy helped me off (it was pouring), called out something at the door, told me to go in and go upstairs, then disappeared around the corner with the donkey. I called--no one answered--so I went upstairs, just seeing my way by the light of a little dull, smoky lamp put in a niche of the wall. I saw two doors when I got up to the top of the stairs, both shut, so I called again, knocked; a man's voice said something which I supposed to be "entrate" and I walked in. I found myself in a big room hardly lighted--a small lamp on a table, a fire of a sort of peat and wood, a bed in one corner on which was stretched a big man with a black beard and red shirt; another man not quite so big, but also in a red shirt and a hat on his head, got up when I came in, from a chair where he had been sitting by the fire. He said something I couldn't understand, first to me and then to his companion on the bed, who answered I thought rather gruffly (they both spoke Neapolitan "patois" which I couldn't understand at first). I didn't feel very comfortable (still I liked even that room with those two brigand-looking men better than the mountain-side with the flames and the lava), but I tried to explain, took off my wet cloak which spoke for itself, and went toward the fire. My friend with the hat always keeping up a running conversation with the man on the bed, brought up a chair, then a sort of stand over which he hung my cloak, and proceeded to take a bottle out of a cupboard which I supposed was their famous wine (lacrima Christi) which one always drinks at Naples. However that I declined and established myself on the chair by the fire. He took the other one, and when I looked at him I saw that he had rather a nice face; so I took courage. He pointed to my shoes, which were wet as we had walked a little, and wanted to talk. After a little while I began to understand him, and he me; and we had quite a friendly conversation. He looked at my shoes, asked me where they were made, and when I said in Rome was madly interested; he had a brother in Rome, a shoemaker, perhaps I knew him "Giuseppe Ricci," he might have made those