You may conjecture what heavenly peace came in when the Asian went out, but there is no one to tell what havoc was wrought on board ship; in fact, if there could have been such a thing as a witch, I should believe that imp sunk them, for a stray Levantine brig picked her—­still agile as a monkey—­from a wreck off the Cape de Verdes and carried her into Leghorn, where she took—­will you mind, if I say?—­leg-bail, and escaped from durance.  What happened on her wanderings I’m sure is of no consequence, till one night she turned up outside a Fiesolan villa, scorched with malaria fevers and shaken to pieces with tertian and quartan and all the rest of the agues.  So, after having shaken almost to death, she decided upon getting well; all the effervescence was gone; she chose to remain with her beads in that family, a mysterious tame servant, faithful, jealous, indefatigable.  But she never grew; at ninety she was of the height of a yard-stick,—­and nothing could have been finer than to have a dwarf in those old palaces, you know.

In my great-grandmother’s home, however, the tradition of the Asian sprite with her string of amber gods was handed down like a legend, and, no one knowing what had been, they framed many a wild picture of the Thing enchanting all her spirits from their beads about her, and calling and singing and whistling up the winds with them till storm rolled round the ship, and fierce fog and foam and drowning fell upon her capturers.  But they all believed, that, snatched from the wreck into islands of Eastern archipelagoes, the vindictive child and her quieted gods might yet be found.  Of course my father knew this, and when that night in the church he saw the girl saying such devout prayers on an amber rosary, with a demure black slave so tiny and so old behind her, it flashed back on him, and he would have spoken, if, just then, the ray had not revealed the great painting, so that he forgot all about it, and when at last he turned, they were gone.  But my father had come back to America, had sat down quietly in his elder brother’s house, among the hills where I am to live, and was thought to be a sedate young man and a good match, till a freak took him that he must go back and find that girl in Italy.  How to do it, with no clue but an amber rosary?  But do it he did, stationing himself against a pillar in that identical church and watching the worshippers, and not having long to wait before in she came, with little Asian behind.  Papa isn’t in the least romantic; he is one of those great fertilizing temperaments, golden hair and beard, and hazel eyes, if you will.  He’s a splendid old fellow!  It’s absurd to delight in one’s father,—­so bread-and-buttery,—­but I can’t help it.  He’s far stronger than I; none of the little weak Italian traits that streak me, like water in thick, syrupy wine.  No,—­he isn’t in the least romantic, but he says he was fated to this step, and could no more have resisted than his heart could have refused to beat.  When he spoke