oded and crammed his hands into his mouth and spat them out in
another explosion, and gave Philip an aimless push, which toppled him on
to the bed. He uttered a horrified Oh! and then gave up, and bolted away
down the passage, shrieking like a child, to tell the joke to his wife.

For a time Philip lay on the bed, pretending to himself that he was hurt
grievously. He could scarcely see for temper, and in the passage he ran
against Miss Abbott, who promptly burst into tears.

"I sleep at the Globo," he told her, "and start for Sawston tomorrow
morning early. He has assaulted me. I could prosecute him. But shall
not."

"I can't stop here," she sobbed. "I daren't stop here. You will have to
take me with you!"

Chapter 3

Opposite the Volterra gate of Monteriano, outside the city, is a very
respectable white-washed mud wall, with a coping of red crinkled tiles
to keep it from dissolution. It would suggest a gentleman's garden if
there was not in its middle a large hole, which grows larger with every
rain-storm. Through the hole is visible, firstly, the iron gate that is
intended to close it; secondly, a square piece of ground which, though
not quite, mud, is at the same time not exactly grass; and finally,
another wall, stone this time, which has a wooden door in the middle and
two wooden-shuttered windows each side, and apparently forms the facade
of a one-storey house.

This house is bigger than it looks, for it slides for two storeys down
the hill behind, and the wooden door, which is always locked, really
leads into the attic. The knowing person prefers to follow the
precipitous mule-track round the turn of the mud wall till he can take
the edifice in the rear. Then--being now on a level with the cellars--he
lifts up his head and shouts. If his voice sounds like something
light--a letter, for example, or some vegetables, or a bunch of
flowers--a basket is let out of the first-floor windows by a string,
into which he puts his burdens and departs. But if he sounds like
something heavy, such as a log of wood, or a piece of meat, or a
visitor, he is interrogated, and then bidden or forbidden to ascend.
The ground floor and the upper floor of that battered house are alike
deserted, and the inmates keep the central portion, just as in a dying
body all life retires to the heart. There is a door at the top of the
first flight of stairs, and if the visitor is admitted he will find a
welcome which is not necessarily co