e returned. This absence, therefore,
startled and perturbed him--more--made him feel guilty of a lapse from
his duty. Perhaps he should not have gone to the festa. True, he had
asked the padrone to accompany him. But still--

He went out onto the terrace and looked around him. The dawn was faint
and pale. Wreaths of mist, like smoke trails, hung below him, obscuring
the sea. The ghostly cone of Etna loomed into the sky, extricating itself
from swaddling bands of clouds which shrouded its lower flanks. The air
was chilly upon this height, and the aspect of things was gray and
desolate, without temptation, without enchantment, to lure men out from
their dwellings.

What could have kept the padrone from his sleep till this hour?

Gaspare shivered a little as he stared over the wall. He was
thinking--thinking furiously. Although scarcely educated at all, he was
exceedingly sharp-witted, and could read character almost as swiftly and
surely as an Arab. At this moment he was busily recalling the book he had
been reading for many weeks in Sicily, the book of his padrone's
character, written out for him in words, in glances, in gestures, in
likes and dislikes, most clearly in actions. Mentally he turned the
leaves until he came to the night of the fishing, to the waning of the
night, to the journey to the caves, to the dawn when he woke upon the
sand and found that the padrone was not beside him. His brown hand
tightened on the stick he held, his brown eyes stared with the glittering
acuteness of a great bird's at the cloud trails hiding the sea below
him--hiding the sea, and all that lay beside the sea.

There was no one on the terrace. But there was a figure for a moment on
the mountain-side, leaping downward. The ravine took it and hid it in a
dark embrace. Gaspare had found what he sought, a clew to guide him. His
hesitation was gone. In his uneducated and intuitive mind there was no
longer any room for a doubt. He knew that his padrone was where he had
been in that other dawn, when he slipped away from the cave where his
companions were sleeping.

Surefooted as a goat, and incited to abnormal activity by a driving
spirit within him that throbbed with closely mingled curiosity, jealousy,
and anger, Gaspare made short work of the path in the ravine. In a few
minutes he came out on to the road by Isola Bella. On the shore was a
group of fishermen, all of them friends of his, getting ready their
fishing-tackle, and haulin