made it: and His hands prepared the dry land._'" A picturesque cloister connects the Baptistery or Church of St. Fosca with the cathedral. The relics of the virgin martyr are said to rest beneath the low, ancient church. The pillars of the cloisters are so short that a tall man can touch the arches they sustain; but they are of pure Greek marble, with delicately sculptured capitals. Everything seems so small,--the two churches, the tower, an ancient well, and a marble column are all that remain, save one or two old buildings that may now have disappeared, so tumble-down were they when last I saw them. The Piazza (!) around which these buildings stand is such a bit of a grass-grown place! The only street is but a {170} footpath, and yet we reverence Torcello for its age. The banner of Venice has floated here more than a thousand years,--more than six centuries before Columbus discovered our part of the globe. There is a little museum in which a few antiquities are gathered, where one may rest and think before taking leave of this ghost-haunted island of Torcello, so well described by Helen Hunt:-- "Short sail from Venice sad Torcello lies, Deserted island low, and still and green. Before fair Venice was a bride and queen Torcello's court was held in fairer guise Than Doges knew. To day death-vapors rise From fields where once her palaces were seen, And in her silent towers that crumbling lean Unterrified the brooding swallow flies." As we row back to Venice in the lovely evening, with the orange and purple of the after-glow dissolving into paler and colder tints, and the stars peeping out one by one, Giacomo tells us a ghost-story which is familiar to the gondoliers and fishermen, a group of whom we have just met returning from Venice to their strange fishing-ground. The story runs that once upon a time six men were fishing and living together in a small hut among the _valli_. One of them had a little son who stayed in the hut to cook food for the men whenever they came in. As the night was the best time for fishing, the little fellow was often alone from sunset to dawn. One morning, as it was growing light, the men stopped their work and rowed toward home; and on the way they saw the body of a drowned man, which the tide was taking out to sea. They lifted the corpse into their boat, and laid it on the prow, the head resting on the arm. The little boy was watching for them; and when he saw the seventh man, {171} he thought he was some other fisherman who had fallen asleep after his night of work. He cheerily called out, "Breakfast is ready; come along!" and ran to the hut to see that all was right. When the six were seated at the table, the boy asked, "Where is the other man? Will he not have breakfast too?" "Why, isn't he here? You had better run and call him," answered one of the men.