er you do not know, conte,
for gentlemen never go there. It is in the Abruzzi, beyond Trevi. Did
you ever hear of the Serra di Sant' Antonio, where so many people have
been killed?"

"Diana! I should think so! In the old days--"

"Bene," said Gigi, "Fillettino is there, at the beginning of the
pass."

"Tell me, Gigi mio," I said, "are you not very thirsty?" The way to
the heart of the wine carter lies through a pint measure. Gigi was
thirsty, as I supposed, and we sat down in the porch of my inn, and
the host brought a stoup of his best wine and set it before us.

"I would like to hear about the crazy foreigner who is gone to live in
the hills among the brigand," I said, when he had wet his throat.

"What I know I will tell you, Signor Conte," he answered, filling his
pipe with bits that he broke off a cigar. "But I know very little. He
must be a foreigner, because he goes to such a place; and he is
certainly crazy, for he shuts his daughter in the old castle, and
watches her as though she was made of wax, like the flowers you have
in Rome under glass."

"How long have they been there, these queer folks?" I asked.

"What do I know? It may be a month or two. A man told me, who had come
that way from Fucino, and that is all I know."

"Do people often travel that way, Gigi?"

"Not often, indeed," he answered, with a grin. "They are not very
civil, the people of those parts." Gigi made a gesture, or a series of
gestures. He put up his hands as though firing a gun. Then he opened
his right hand and closed it, with a kind of insinuating twirl of the
fingers, which means "to steal." Lastly he put his hand over his eyes,
and looked through his fingers as though they were bars, which means
"prison." From this I inferred that the inhabitants of Fillettino were
addicted to murder, robbery, and other pastimes, for which they
sometimes got into trouble. The place he spoke of is about thirty
miles, or something more, from Palestrina, and I began planning how I
should get there as cheaply as possible. I had never been there, and
wondered what kind of a habitation the count had found; for I knew it
must be the roughest sort of mountain town, with some dilapidated
castle or other overhanging it. But the count was rich, and he had
doubtless made himself very comfortable. I sat in silence while Gigi
finished his wine and chatted about his affairs between the whiffs of
his pipe.

"Gigi," I said at last, "I want to buy a donkey