s the point
in sight, a gray wall with blind arches. The man disappears through
a narrow archway, and I follow. Within is an enormous square tower. I
think it was built in Spanish days, as an outlook for Barbary pirates.
A bell hung in it, which was set clanging when the white sails of the
robbers appeared to the southward; and the alarm was repeated up the
coast, the towers were manned, and the brown-cheeked girls flew away
to the hills, I doubt not, for the touch of the sirocco was not half so
much to be dreaded as the rough importunity of a Saracen lover. The bell
is gone now, and no Moslem rovers are in sight. The maidens we had just
passed would be safe if there were. My brigand disappears round the
tower; and I follow down steps, by a white wall, and lo! a house,--a red
stucco, Egyptian-looking building,--on the very edge of the rocks.
The man unlocks a door and goes in. I consider this an invitation,
and enter. On one side of the passage a sleeping-room, on the other
a kitchen,--not sumptuous quarters; and we come then upon a pretty
circular terrace; and there, in its glass case, is the lantern of the
point. My brigand is a lighthouse-keeper, and welcomes me in a quiet
way, glad, evidently, to see the face of a civilized being. It is very
solitary, he says. I should think so. It is the end of everything. The
Mediterranean waves beat with a dull thud on the worn crags below. The
rocks rise up to the sky behind. There is nothing there but the sun, an
occasional sail, and quiet, petrified Capri, three miles distant across
the strait. It is an excellent place for a misanthrope to spend a week,
and get cured. There must be a very dispiriting influence prevailing
here; the keeper refused to take any money, the solitary Italian we have
seen so affected.

We returned late. The young moon, lying in the lap of the old one, was
superintending the brilliant sunset over Capri, as we passed the last
point commanding it; and the light, fading away, left us stumbling over
the rough path among the hills, darkened by the high walls. We were not
sorry to emerge upon the crest above the Massa road. For there lay the
sea, and the plain of Sorrento, with its darkening groves and hundreds
of twinkling lights. As we went down the last descent, the bells of the
town were all ringing, for it was the eve of the fete of St. Antonino.

CAPRI

"CAP, signor? Good day for Grott." Thus spoke a mariner, touching his
Phrygian cap. The peo