"A little smuggling operation, signore. Surely, signore, England has custom houses and therefore must have smugglers too." "One has heard of them of course. But I wouldn't mind a bet that there is not one of them that resembles you. Neither do I believe that they deal with packages as small as the one you lowered into that ghostly boat. You saw her of course. There was a boat." "There was somebody to cut the string, as you see, signore. Look, here is all that twine, all of it but a little piece. It may have been a man swimming in the dark water. A man with a soul, fit to make a ghost of . . . let us call him a ghost, signore." "Oh yes, let us," the other said lightly. "I am sure that when I wake up to-morrow all this will seem to me a dream. Even now I feel inclined to pinch myself." "What's that for, in Heaven's name?" "It's a saying we have in our country. Yes, you, your hermit, our talk, and this very tower, all this will be like a dream." "I would say 'nothing better' if it was not that most people are only too ready to talk about their dreams. No, signore, let all this be to you of less consequence than if it were a tale of ghosts, of mere ghosts in which you do not believe. You forced yourself on me as if you were the lord of this place, but I feel friendly enough to you." "I didn't ask for your friendship," retorted the young traveller in a clear voice so void of all offence that the other man accepted it for a mere statement of a fact. "Certainly not. I spoke of my own feelings, and though I am, you may say, a new-comer and a stranger in my own native city, I assure you it is better to have me for a friend than for an enemy. And the best thing of all would be to forget all about me. It would be also the kindest thing you could do." "Really?" said Cosmo in a tone of sympathy. "How can you expect me to forget the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to me in all my life?" "In all your life! H'm! You have a long life before you yet, signorino." "Oh, but this is an adventure." "That's what I mean. You have so many marvellous adventures before you, signorino, that this one is sure to be forgotten very soon. Then why not at once?" "No, my friend, you don't seem somehow a person one could easily forget." "I---- God forbid. . . . Good-night, signore." No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the man in the cap bounded across the platform, dived into the black square opening on its landward side, and ran down the steps so lightly that not a sound reached the ears of the other. Cosmo went down the winding stair, but cautiously in the profound darkness. The door at the bottom stood open and he stepped out on to the deserted jetty. He could see on it nothing in the shape of a fleeting shadow.