en they saw that there was no cheese
left and but little bread, they let him go by without paying anything.

He went up to the left and sat down on the ground under the trees that
are there, and he filled his little clay pipe and smoked a while,
without even speaking to his dog. It was quiet, for it was long past the
hour when the carts come in, and the small boys were all gone to school,
and the great paved slope between the steps of the basilica and the gate
was quite deserted, and very white and hot.

Ercole was not very tired, though he had walked all night and a good
part of the morning. He could have gone on walking till sunset if he had
chosen, all the way to his little stone house near Ardea, stopping by
the way to get a meal; and then he would not have slept much longer than
usual. A Roman peasant in his native Campagna, with enough to eat and a
little wine, is hard to beat at walking. Ercole had not stopped to rest,
but to think.

When he had thought some time, he looked about to see if any one were
looking at him, and he saw that the only people in sight were a long way
off. He took his big clasp-knife out of his pocket and opened it. As the
clasp clicked at the back of the blade Nino woke and sat up, for the
noise generally meant food.

The blade was straight and clean, and tolerably sharp. Ercole looked at
it critically, drew the edge over his coarse thumb-nail to find if there
were any nick in the steel, and then scratched the same thumb-nail with
it, as one erases ink with a knife, to see how sharp it was. The point
was like a needle, but he considered that the edge was dull, and he drew
it up and down one of the brown barrels of his gun, as carefully as he
would have sharpened a razor on a whetstone. After that he stropped it
on the tough leathern strap by which he slung the gun over his shoulder
when he walked; when he was quite satisfied, he shut the knife again and
put it back into his pocket, and fell to thinking once more.

Nino watched the whole operation with bloodshot eyes, his tongue hanging
out and quivering rhythmically as he panted in the heat to cool himself.
When the knife disappeared, and the chance of a crust with it, the dog
got up, deliberately turned his back to his master, and sat down again
to look at the view.

"You see," said Ercole to himself and Nino, "this is an affair which
needs thought. One must be just. It is one thing to kill a person's
body, but it is quite another t