"That is easy to say," Gennaro gravely answered. "It is you, it is I. It is all in this house, and many outside it. If he wishes for mirth, we discomfort him. If he asks to be alone, we disturb him. He longed for a friend, and found none for fifteen years. Then he found me, and the first night I--I who have been in the woods and understood things too--betray him to you, and send him in to die. But what could I do?" "Gently, gently," said I. "Oh, assuredly he will die. He will lie in the small room all night, and in the morning he will be dead. That I know for certain." "There, that will do," said Mr. Sandbach. "I shall be sitting with him." "Filomena Giusti sat all night with Caterina, but Caterina was dead in the morning. They would not let her out, though I begged, and prayed, and cursed, and beat the door, and climbed the wall. They were ignorant fools, and thought I wished to carry her away. And in the morning she was dead." "What is all this?" I asked Signora Scafetti. "All kinds of stories will get about," she replied, "and he, least of anyone, has reason to repeat them." "And I am alive now," he went on, "because I had neither parents nor relatives nor friends, so that, when the first night came, I could run through the woods, and climb the rocks, and plunge into the water, until I had accomplished my desire!" We heard a cry from Eustace's room--a faint but steady sound, like the sound of wind in a distant wood, heard by one standing in tranquillity. "That," said Gennaro, "was the last noise of Caterina. I was hanging on to her window then, and it blew out past me." And, lifting up his hand, in which my ten lira note was safely packed, he solemnly cursed Mr. Sandbach, and Leyland, and myself, and Fate, because Eustace was dying in the upstairs room. Such is the working of the Southern mind; and I verily believe that he would not have moved even then, had not Leyland, that unspeakable idiot, upset the lamp with his elbow. It was a patent self-extinguishing lamp, bought by Signora Scafetti, at my special request, to replace the dangerous thing that she was using. The result was, that it went out; and the mere physical change from light to darkness had more power over the ignorant animal nature of Gennaro than the most obvious dictates of logic and reason. I felt, rather than saw, that he had left the room, and shouted out to Mr. Sandbach: "Have you got the key of Eustace's room in your pocket?" But Mr. Sandbach and Leyland were both on the floor, having mistaken each other for Gennaro, and some more precious time was wasted in finding a match. Mr. Sandbach had only just time to say that he had left the key in the door, in case the Miss Robinsons wished to pay Eustace a visit, when we heard a noise on the stairs, and there was Gennaro, carrying Eustace down. We rushed out and blocked up the passage, and they lost heart and retreated to the upper landing.