its only other occupant, an olive-skinned young man with lustrous
eyes and a low collar, who sat on the other side of the table, perusing
the Fanfulla di Domenica. This gentleman, his daily vis-a-vis, returned
the nod with a Latin eloquence of gesture, and Wyant passed on to
the ante-chamber, where he paused to light a cigarette. He was just
restoring the case to his pocket when he heard a hurried step behind
him, and the lustrous-eyed young man advanced through the glass doors of
the dining-room.

"Pardon me, sir," he said in measured English, and with an intonation of
exquisite politeness; "you have let this letter fall."

Wyant, recognizing his friend's note of introduction to Doctor Lombard,
took it with a word of thanks, and was about to turn away when he
perceived that the eyes of his fellow diner remained fixed on him with a
gaze of melancholy interrogation.

"Again pardon me," the young man at length ventured, "but are you by
chance the friend of the illustrious Doctor Lombard?"

"No," returned Wyant, with the instinctive Anglo-Saxon distrust of
foreign advances. Then, fearing to appear rude, he said with a guarded
politeness: "Perhaps, by the way, you can tell me the number of his
house. I see it is not given here."

The young man brightened perceptibly. "The number of the house is
thirteen; but any one can indicate it to you--it is well known in Siena.
It is called," he continued after a moment, "the House of the Dead
Hand."

Wyant stared. "What a queer name!" he said.

"The name comes from an antique hand of marble which for many hundred
years has been above the door."

Wyant was turning away with a gesture of thanks, when the other added:
"If you would have the kindness to ring twice."

"To ring twice?"

"At the doctor's." The young man smiled. "It is the custom."

It was a dazzling March afternoon, with a shower of sun from the
mid-blue, and a marshalling of slaty clouds behind the umber-colored
hills. For nearly an hour Wyant loitered on the Lizza, watching the
shadows race across the naked landscape and the thunder blacken in the
west; then he decided to set out for the House of the Dead Hand. The
map in his guidebook showed him that the Via Papa Giulio was one of the
streets which radiate from the Piazza, and thither he bent his course,
pausing at every other step to fill his eye with some fresh image of
weather-beaten beauty. The clouds had rolled upward, obscuring the
sunshine and hanging