nd
crumbling walls the fisher-boys often plunged into the depths below;
or they lay upon the broad sills of the gaping window-spaces to dry
themselves in the sun. Men came with rods and lines to fish from its
deserted apartments, through which, when rough weather was at hand, the
screaming sea-birds flew. The waves played frivolously enough in its
recesses. And their voices were heard against the slimy and defiant
stones calling to teach other merrily, as perhaps once the voices
of revellers long dead called in the happy hours of a vanished
villeggiatura.

But the night wrought on it, in it, and about it change. Its solitude
then became desolation, the darkness of its stones a blackness that
was tragic, its ruin more than a suggestion, the decisive picture of
despair.

At its base was a line of half-discovered window-spaces, the lower parts
of which had become long since the prey of the waves. Above it were
more window-spaces, fully visible, and flanking a high doorway, once, no
doubt, connected with a staircase, but now giving upon mid-air. Formerly
there had been another floor, but this had fallen into decay and
disappeared, with the exception of one small and narrow chamber situated
immediately over the doorway. Isolated, for there was no means of
approach to it, this chamber had something of the aspect of a low and
sombre tower sluggishly lifting itself towards the sky. The palace was
set upon rock and flanked by rocks. Round about it grass grew to the
base of a high cliff at perhaps two hundred yards distance from it. And
here and there grass and tufts of rank herbage pushed in its crevices,
proclaiming the triumph of time to exulting winds and waters.

As Gaspare rowed in cautiously and gently to this deserted place, to
which from the land no road, no footpath led, he stared at the darkness
of the palace with superstitious awe, then at the small, familiar boat,
which followed in their wake because he held the tow-rope.

"Signore," he said, "I am afraid!"

"You--Gaspare!"

"I am afraid for the Signora. Why should she come here all alone with
the _fattura della morte_? I am afraid for the Signora."

The boat touched the edge of the rock to the right of the palace.

"And where has the Signora gone, Signore? I cannot see her, and I cannot
hear her."

He lifted up his hand. They listened. But they heard only the sucking
murmur of the sea against the rocks perforated with little holes, and in
distant, abando