Chapter 3

Opposite the Volterra gate of Monteriano, outside the city,
is a very respectable white-washed mud wall, with a coping
of red crinkled tiles to keep it from dissolution. It would
suggest a gentleman's garden if there was not in its middle
a large hole, which grows larger with every rain-storm.
Through the hole is visible, firstly, the iron gate that is
intended to close it; secondly, a square piece of ground
which, though not quite, mud, is at the same time not
exactly grass; and finally, another wall, stone this time,
which has a wooden door in the middle and two
wooden-shuttered windows each side, and apparently forms the
facade of a one-storey house.

This house is bigger than it looks, for it slides for
two storeys down the hill behind, and the wooden door, which
is always locked, really leads into the attic. The knowing
person prefers to follow the precipitous mule-track round
the turn of the mud wall till he can take the edifice in the
rear. Then--being now on a level with the cellars--he lifts
up his head and shouts. If his voice sounds like something
light--a letter, for example, or some vegetables, or a bunch
of flowers--a basket is let out of the first-floor windows by
a string, into which he puts his burdens and departs. But
if he sounds like something heavy, such as a log of wood, or
a piece of meat, or a visitor, he is interrogated, and then