to one place--like
Venice, or any show city--instead of going to another nest of anthills;
or why we all crowded into one anthill (like a church or theatre) at a
particular time. So a theatre-fire would be when They'd touched the
anthill with one of their cigars, to make the ants run out. Or a volcano
would have an eruption because They'd poked the mountain with a great
pin to see what would happen. Or when we're cut or hurt in any way, it's
because They've marked us to know one from the other, as we run about. I
do hope They're not thinking about _us_ now, or They'll drop something
and smash the automobile."

"Oh, don't, Beechy! You make my blood run cold!" cried Aunt Kathryn. "Do
let's talk of something else quickly. How gracefully the vines are
trained here, draped along those rows of trees in the meadows. It's much
prettier than ordinary vineyards. You might imagine fairies playing tag
under these arbours."

"Or fauns chasing nymphs," said Sir Ralph. "No doubt they did a few
years ago and caught them too."

"I'm glad they don't now," replied Aunt Kathryn, "or this would be no
fit place for ladies to motor."

But I wasn't glad, for the whole country was one wide background for a
pre-Raphaelite picture, and the mountains to which Aunt Kathryn had
applied so insulting a simile were even grander in size and nobler in
shape than before. We had seen many old chateaux (though never a
surfeit), but the best of all had been reserved for to-day. Far away on
our left, as we drove towards Padua, it rose above the little town that
crawled to the foot of the castle's hill to beg protection; and it was
exactly like a city painted by Mantegna or Carpaccio, Mr. Barrymore
said. Up the hill ran the noblest and biggest wall that an Old Master's
imagination could have conceived. Many men might walk on it abreast; and
at every few yards it bristled with sturdy watch-towers, not ruined, but
looking as ready to defy the enemy to-day as they were six hundred years
ago. The culmination was the castle itself, so magnificently
proportioned, so worthily proud of its place, that it seemed as if the
spirit of the Middle Ages were there embodied, gazing down in haughty
resignation upon a new world it did not even wish to understand.

The name of the castle was Soave; but when I heard that nothing
startling enough to please me had happened there, I wouldn't know its
history, for my fancy was equal to inventing one more thrilling. There
was pl