It was a false alarm. The sudden clanging of every bell on the place, the explosion of twelve hundred mortars and the simultaneous booming of an enormous cannon--that far-famed gun whose wayward tricks had cost the lives of hundreds of its loaders in the days of the Good Duke--might have passed for an earthquake of the first magnitude, so far as noise and concussion were concerned. The island rocked to its foundations. It was the signal for the festival of the patron saint to begin. Nobody could have slept through that din. Mr. Heard, dog-tired as he was, woke up and opened his eyes. "Things are happening here," he said--a remark which he found himself repeating on several later occasions. He looked round the room. It was not an hotel bed-room. Then he began to remember things, drowsily. He remembered the pleasant surprise of the previous evening--how the Duchess had called to mind a small villa, vacated earlier than she had expected by a lady friend for whom she had taken it. It was furnished, spotlessly clean, with a woman, a capable cook, in attendance. She had insisted on his living there. "So much nicer than a dreadful room in an hotel! You'll show the bishop all over it, won't you, Denis?" Walking together, he and Denis, they had been overtaken by another recent visitor to Nepenthe. It was Mr. Edgar Marten. Mr. Marten was a hirsute and impecunious young Hebrew of low tastes, with a passion for mineralogy. He had profited by some University grant to make certain studies at Nepenthe which was renowned for its variegated rocks. There was something striking about him, thought Mr. Heard. He said little of consequence, but Denis listened enthusiastically to his abstruse remarks about fractures and so forth, and watched with eagerness as he poked his stick into the rough walls to dislodge some stone that seemed to be of interest. "So you don't know the difference between augite and hornblende?" he once enquired. "Really? Dash my eyes! How old did you say you were?" "Nineteen." "And what have you been doing, Phipps, these last nineteen years?" "One can't know everything at my age." "Granted. But I think you might have learnt that much. Come to me on Thursday morning. I'll see what I can do for you." Mr. Heard rather admired this youthful scientist. The fellow knew what he was after; he was after stones. Perfect of his kind--a condition which always appealed to the bishop. Pleasant youngsters, both of them. And so different from each other! As to Denis--he could not make up his mind about Denis. To begin with, he exhaled that peculiar College aroma which the most heroic efforts of a lifetime often fail to dissipate. Then, he had said something about Florence, and Cinque-Cento, and Jacopo Bellini. The bishop, a practical man, had not much use for Jacopo Bellini or for people who talked about him. None the less, while making himself useful with unpacking and arranging things, Denis dropped a remark which struck Mr. Heard.