e left his country. So I made arrangements to meet Ruffiano and to dine
with him at the same Italian restaurant in the upper room of which we
held our meeting, and after this I shook hands and went about my own
business.

It was dark when we met again, for this was only the fifth day of March,
and it was about half-past six in the evening. Ruffiano told me that he
had left word at Brunow's lodgings that he might be found here, and we
ate our simple dinner, drank our half-flask of Chianti together, and
had already reached our coffee and cigars when Brunow came to keep
his appointment. He was astonished to find me there, and, I thought,
disagreeably astonished. Remembering the terms on which we had parted
when we had last Been each other, I was a little surprised at this. I
have said already that at our parting on that occasion we shook hands
for the last time. It was not because I did not offer him my hand on
this occasion, but he seemed not to see it, and I took it back again,
resolved in my own mind not to be angry with him, and thinking it
probable that he had some attack of his old infirmity of temper.

"Ah, you are here!" cried Ruffiano, rising and half embracing him. "It
is a pity you were not here earlier. We have had a jolly little dinner
and a jolly little talk."

I seem to hear the old fellow's voice now, with its quaint accent,
the "jollia leetle dinnera" and the "jol-lia leetle talka," with his
half-childish-sounding vowel at the end of almost every word. Poor old
Ruffiano! He has seen the end of his trouble this many and many a year.
I never knew a more loyal gentleman, or one less capable of digging such
a wicked trap as he fell into. Brunow's manner was altogether a puzzle
to me, and even next day, enlightened as I was by events, I was unable
to understand it, because it seemed altogether so silly a thing for him
to run his neck into the noose as he did. I have sometimes thought it
possible that he counted on his own apparent simplicity for safety, but
in that case he could not have counted how far his embarrassment at the
beginning had invited suspicion and misunderstanding.

First of all, he made some little effort to back out of the undertaking,
and then, Ruffiano describing himself as being altogether disappointed,
he became resigned, and undertook to pilot us to the place of
rendezvous. He had a cab outside, one of the old-fashioned four-wheeled
hackney-coaches, and as he led us to it some stranger