"You shall see the relics that were taken from the ruins and are now in the museum at Naples," her mother told her. "The life of the old Pompeiians has been studied from those relics and a guide can tell you just how they did their housekeeping and what their life was like." Before she left America, Edith had looked forward to the smoking mountain of Vesuvius and the city of Pompeii as being the most wonderful part of her journey. The volcano, and the city which lay buried under ashes for centuries, had been the goal of her desires. "Wait until we see Vesuvius and Pompeii!" had been her cry whenever she wrote home. "Then I shall have something to tell you!" But she turned her face away from the forbidding crater and the desolate beds of lava with a feeling of disappointment that was half fear. "Perhaps I shall like better to go into the museum and see the curious things that were found in Pompeii," she said, as she searched for a bit of lava from which to have a piece of jewelry fashioned. "Just think of having the whole world interested to know how the people baked their bread so long ago," said Rafael; and when they had returned to Naples, the children found it very interesting to visit the museum and imagine how the people lived in the time of Christ. Then one day they went down to the ruined city, riding in a small car over a roadbed so loosely made that Rafael laughed about it, and Edith said it was only a toy journey. But when they went through the sea-gate at Pompeii, passed the army of boys bearing baskets of earth from the excavations, and stood in the silent streets, Edith drew closer to her mother, and Rafael walked quietly beside them. [Illustration: "THE ARMY OF BOYS BEARING BASKETS OF EARTH FROM THE EXCAVATIONS AT POMPEII" ] They followed the instructions of the guide and looked obediently at the deep ruts made in the pavements of the narrow streets by the old Roman chariot wheels. They walked through the forum, and stood in the ruined amphitheatre. At last Edith drew Mrs. Sprague into the lonely angle of a wall where they could see nothing of the crumbled houses all about them, the pavements, or the great stepping-stones in the streets. "I want to go home," she said with a shudder. "I never want to see Vesuvius again." She was plainly homesick. It was a sudden ending to the "long thoughts of youth" which had filled so many hours with bright anticipations; but she was in such a hurry to get away from the buried city that they took the next train back to Naples without even stopping to buy picture postcards of the ruins. When they reached their hotel in Naples they found a foreign war-ship anchored in the bay. "There is the old man-of-war threatening us from the land, and here is one in the bay," exclaimed Edith. "It makes me nervous!" Mrs. Sprague saw that her daughter was tired. "We will go back to Rome to-morrow," she said.