It was nearly half-past five when they started. The sun had not yet risen, but it was already light. The sky was pale grey with dark clouds low down on the horizon. There were mists in the valleys and the Lake of Bolsena was hidden from view under what seemed the waters of a milky sea. The air was cold. Driving out of the town, they met a train of pack mules climbing slowly, in the midst of a jingle of bells, up the steep street towards the market-place. Viterbo was still asleep when they drove through. From the crest of the Ciminian mountains they first saw the sun. By seven o’clock they were in Rome. The sun-tipped obelisks, the gilded roofs and cupolas reached up out of shadow into the pale blue sky. They drove up the Corso. In the Piazza di Venezia they stopped at a café, ordered some coffee and while it was being brought looked up in a directory the address of Mrs. Aldwinkle’s doctor. He lived, they found, in the new quarter near the station. “I leave all ve talking to you,” said Hovenden, as they sipped their coffee. “I’m no good at ve language.” “How did you manage the other day when you had to see the doctor yourself?” Chelifer inquired. Lord Hovenden blushed. “Well,” he said, “as a matter of fact, ve doctor I saw was English. But he’s gone away now,” he added hastily, for fear that Chelifer might suggest their bringing the English doctor along too; “gone to Naples,” he further specified, hoping by the accumulation of circumstantial details to give greater verisimilitude to his story, “for an operation.” “He was a surgeon, then?” Chelifer raised his eyebrows. Hovenden nodded. “A surgeon,” he echoed, and buried his face in his coffee-cup. They drove on. As they turned out of the Piazza into Trajan’s Forum, Chelifer noticed a little crowd, mostly of street boys, pressing against the railings on the further side of the forum. At its centre stood a pale thin woman in dove-grey clothes whom even at this distance one could not fail to recognise as English, or at any rate definitely not Italian. The lady in grey was leaning over the railings, lowering very carefully at the end of a string, to which it was ingeniously attached by four subsidiary strings passed through holes bored in the rim, a large aluminium pannikin filled with milk. Slowly revolving as it went down, the pannikin was lowered to the floor of the sunken forum. Hardly had it touched the ground when, with simultaneous mewings and purrings, half a dozen thirsty cats came running up to it and began to lap at the white milk. Others followed; every cranny gave up its cat. Lean toms jumped down from their marble pedestals and trotted across the open with the undulating, bounding gait of a running leopard. Month-old kittens staggered up on tottering legs. In a few seconds the pannikin was besieged by a horde of cats. The street boys whooped with delight. “Well, I’m blowed,” said Lord Hovenden, who had slowed up to watch the curious scene. “I believe it’s your mover.”