“Agnese buys it by the pound at the tobacconist’s; it costs like gold dust.” Here a fat gentleman reared up from his nest of newspapers in the corner. “Salt is free in Sicily,” he said; “we do not tax it as they do in Italy. For a few _soldi_ you can buy a _kilo_ of the best, the most fine. What you see is mineral salt, virgin salt, and comes from a cave in the top of the mountain; there is none to compare with it!” “There is no salt tax in Sicily,” said a small neat man who looked an _avvocato_. “It would be useless; each one would then make his own. You need only take water from the sea, put it in a pan, set it in the sun--_via_! the water evaporates, and leaves salt as good as this!” “Not so good!” roared the fat man, “miserable, inferior salt!” The veins in his neck swelled with anger. “Isn’t all salt pretty much alike?” Patsy put in soothingly. “_Per Bacco_, no! It is all different. The salt from the sea, who knows what nastiness gets into it? This salt, pure and fresh from the bowels of the earth, has soda and other valuable minerals mixed with it; there is no comparison, _me spiego_?” (Do I explain myself?) “Here, go thou, Teodoro; bring a little bit of salt that these signori may know I speak the truth!” Teodoro, a handsome bearded young man in high brown shooting boots, had just entered the carriage; we had noticed him walking up and down the platform with a pair of pointers in leash. “_Va bene._” Teodoro nodded good-naturedly to the fat man, evidently his father, left the car, and walked leisurely across the tracks to the freight train, followed by a porter. He touched a cake of shining crystalline salt too big for one man to carry. “_Pronto!_” cried the guard, lifting his horn. “Wait,” roared the angry man, thrusting his head from the window. “_Che animale!_ don’t you see my son?” “Break it, _corpo di Bacco_! break it,” laughed Teodoro. The porter pushed the glittering block of salt from the truck. It crashed on the pavement broken in two. Teodoro picked up the larger piece, dusted the splinters from his coat, then without a sign of haste stepped on board. “They must be great chiefs,” murmured Patsy, as the guard tootled his horn, and the train crawled out of the station. “A thousand thanks,” I said to Teodoro, as he put the salt in the net over our heads. “It’s too bad to give so much trouble.” “Nothing--a pleasure!” Teodoro had the nicest laugh, the whitest teeth. He and Patsy made friends on the spot. They sat chatting gaily by the further window while the angry father wrangled with the little _avvocato_, who exasperated him more and more every time he spoke. They were in the midst of a hot dispute when the angry man broke off to point out a trolley that runs from the top of the mountain to the station where the salt is loaded on the trains. “_Guardi_, Signora, there is the place where this pure, this exquisite salt is excavated from the entrails of the earth. _Me spiego?_”