crossing the
blue depths of Maggiore. Brendon had never seen the Italian lakes
before and he fell silent in the presence of such beauty; nor did
Mr. Ganns desire to talk. They sat together and watched the panorama
unfold, the hills and gorges, the glory of the light over earth and
water, the presence of man, his little homes upon the mountains, his
little barques upon the lake.

At Luino they left the steamer and proceeded to Tresa. Beside the
railroad, on this brief instalment of the journey, there stood lofty
palisades of close wire netting hung with bells. Peter, who had
travelled here twenty years earlier, explained that they were
erected as a safeguard against the eternal smuggling between
Switzerland and Italy.

"'Only man is vile' in fact," he concluded and woke a passing wave
of bitterness in his companion's spirit.

"And our life is concerned with his vileness," Mark answered. "I
hate myself sometimes and wish I was a grocer or a linen draper or
even a soldier or sailor. It's degrading to let your life's work
depend on the wickedness of your fellow creatures, Ganns. I hope a
time is coming when our craft will be as obsolete as bows and
arrows."

The elder laughed.

"What does Goethe say somewhere?" he asked. "That if man endures
for a million years, he'll never lack obstacles to give him trouble,
or the pressure of need to make him conquer them. Then there's
Montaigne--you ought to read Montaigne--wisest of men. He'll tell
you that human wisdom has never reached the perfection of conduct
that itself prescribes; and could it arrive there, it would still
dictate to itself others beyond. In a word, the world will never be
short of crooks while human nature lasts, nor yet of men trained to
lay them by the heels. Crime will continue, in some form or other,
as long as men do; and as the criminal gets cleverer, so must we."

"I think better of human nature," answered Mark and his friend
applauded him.

"Quite right, my boy--at your age," he said.

They wound over Lugano and came in evening light to its northern
shore. Then once more they took train, climbed aloft, and fell at
last to Menaggio on Como's brink.

"Now," said Peter, "I guess we'll leave our traps here and beat it
to Villa Pianezzo right away. We'll scare the old boy a bit, but can
tell him things all fell right and so we found that we could jog
along a week before we thought to do so. Not a word that I think him
to be in danger."

Within