Then, suddenly, he felt the piece of metal in his hand. His fate was not yet decided. He had a question of honor which God and he were to decide. He spun the coin slowly, but shut his eyes before it had ceased whirling. Then he groped for the coin, and spread his hand over it not daring to look at it. He sat thus for a long time, the cold perspiration standing out on his face. The ship drew nearer and nearer, and he began to distinguish forms on board. In a few minutes she would be within hailing distance. At last he reached down and picked up the coin carefully, and holding it between both palms, he arose and stepped to the side of the boat, prepared for the first time in his life to keep his word of honor. He looked down at the heap of pearls at his feet, then at the rapidly approaching ship. He saw that the men on board had sighted him, and were preparing to lower a boat. Slowly he opened the fingers of the hand covering the coin, and looked between with scared eyes. Then he raised his right hand, made the sign of the cross muttering “Thy will be done,” and slipped quietly over the side of the boat to the waiting mouths below. THE WINE OF PANTINELLI. THE WINE OF PANTINELLI.[4] For an Italian Prince, Fabriano was exceedingly good company for an American doctor. He rode and shot like a cowboy, kept a stud of seventeen polo ponies, and had traveled this little world from end to end. Above all things, he was a connoisseur of wines, and his cellars were stocked with cask upon cask and tier upon tier of cobwebbed bottles of rare old vintages. Indeed, it was indirectly through this passion of Prince Fabriano that Doctor Hardy made his acquaintance. Hardy was consulting physician at the Protestant Hospital in the Villa Betania, outside the Porta Romana, and the Prince, on a flying visit to the Tuscan capital to secure a vinous treasure, and incidentally witness the annual festival of Santa Croce, brought with him a touch of Roman fever which caused his commitment to the care of the American doctor. His illness was short, but long enough to ripen the acquaintance with the doctor into a warm friendship, resulting in an invitation to the physician to visit the princely estate of Fabriano. In this Umbrian fastness, where his ancestors had exercised sovereign power, Fabriano was regarded as the lord of the soil, by all but a few adherents of a deposed house under the leadership of Luigi di Folengo. One evening, as Hardy went to the Prince’s rooms for their usual smoke and game of cards, he found the Prince sitting by the table, holding a bottle of amber-colored liquid. “Why not pull the cork, Fabriano, and let us have something more than a sight of this richly-colored fluid?” said the doctor in a bantering tone. To his surprise, the Prince answered quite seriously, and with almost a shudder: