decent carriage."

"A matchless one! At half-past three, when the heat is less intense,
your lordship will find the horses harnessed. You will have plenty of
time to get to Desio before sunset, and be back in time for supper."

At the appointed time I received notice. My host had more than kept his
word, for the horses sped through Milan at a trot which they did not
relinquish when we got into the Como road, amid the flat and fertile
country which is called the garden of Italy.

After an hour and a half, including a brief halt at Monza, the coachman
drew up his horses before the first house in Desio--an inn.

It was a very poor inn, situated at the corner of the main street and of
a road which branched off into the country. In front of it a few plane-
trees, trained into an arbor, formed an arch of shade. A few feet of
vine clambered about their trunks. The sun was scorching the leaves and
the heavy bunches of grapes which hung here and there. The shutters were
closed, and the little house seemed to have been lulled to sleep by the
heat and light of the atmosphere and the buzzing of the gnats.

"Oh, go in; they'll wake up at once," said the coachman, who had divined
my thoughts.

Then, without waiting for my answer, like a man familiar with the customs
of the country, he took his horses down the road to the stable.

I went in. A swarm of bees and drones were buzzing like a whirlwind
beneath the plane-trees; a frightened white hen ran cackling from her