“Tell them,” said the man, “that I am coming as fast as I can.  For this is Doomsday!” said he.

The boy ran back into the hut, well pleased.  For a moment his voice could not be heard, because of the noisy laughter of the men.  Then he said—­

“It is all right.  He says he is coming.”

Then the men thought that the boy was trying in his turn to put a jest on them, and would have beaten him.  In a moment, however, they heard something coming slowly up the ladder, so they laughed no more, but all turned very pale and sat still and listened.  And only the boy remembered to cross himself.

The footsteps came nearer.  The door was pushed stumblingly open, as by one that fumbles and is not sure of his way.  Then the man that had been dead and drowned, of whom they had made their sport, came in and sat down at the boy’s place, the seventh at the table.  Whereupon there was a great silence.  None spoke, but all looked; for none, save the boy only, could withdraw his eyes from those of the dead man.  Colder and chillier flowed the blood in their veins, till it ceased to flow at all, and froze about their hearts.

Whereat the boy flung himself shrieking into a boat and rowed away by the power of his own saint, Santa Caterina of Siena.  He met some fishermen in a sailing boat, but it was the third day before any dared row to the lonely Casa on the mud bank.  When they did go, three men climbed up the posts at different sides, for the ladder had fallen away.  They went not in, but only looked through the window.  They saw indeed six men, who sat round the platter of cold polenta.  But the seventh, who sat at the bottom in the boy’s place, shone as though he had been on fire, leaning back in his chair as one that laughed and made merry at a jest.  But the six were fallen silent and very sober.

So the three men that looked fell back from off the platform into the water as dead men; and had not their companions been active men of Malamocco, they too had been drowned.  So there to this day in the lonely Casa of the Seven Dead Men the six are sitting, and the fiery seventh at the table-foot, in the boy’s place—­until the Day comes that is Doomsday, which is the last day of all.

CHAPTER IV

THE SINFUL VILLAGE OF SPELLINO

This was the story we told, and there was not a face among the audience that did not blanch, and in that village there were undoubtedly some who that night did not sleep.

Now, the success of the story of the Seven Dead Men was great, surprising, embarrassing.  For as soon as we ceased the children ran off to their homes to bring their mothers, who also had to hear.  So we had to tell as before, without the alteration of a word.

Then home from the meadow pastures where they had been mowing, past the ripening grain, the fathers came, ill-pleased to find the dinner still not ready.  Then these in their turn had to be fetched, and the story told from the beginning.  Yea, and did we vary so much as the droop of a hair on the wet beard of the drowned man as he tumbled in the swirl of the lagoon where the Brenta meets the tide, a dozen voices corrected us, and we were warned to be careful.  A reputation so sudden and tremendous is, at its beginning, somewhat brittle.