was picturesque and to the point; and he feared neither man nor beast, neither tramp nor horned cattle, nor yet wild boar.  He was no respecter of persons at all.  The land where the cottage was had belonged to a great Roman family, now ruined, and when, the land had been sold, he had apparently been part of the bargain, and had come into the possession of the Signora Corbario with it.  In his lonely conversations with Nino, he had expressed his opinion of each member of the family with frankness.

“You are a good dog, Nino,” he would say.  “You are the consolation of my soul.  But you do not understand these things.  Corbario is an assassin.  Money, money, money!  That is all he thinks of from morning till night.  I know it, because he never speaks of it, and yet he never gives away anything.  It is all for himself, the Signora’s millions, the boy’s millions, everything.  When I look at his face, a chill seizes me, and I tremble as when I have the fever.  You never had the malaria fever, Nino.  Dogs don’t have it, do they?”

At the question Nino turned his monstrous head to one side and looked along his muzzle at his master.  If he had possessed a tail he would have wagged it, or thumped the hard ground with it a few times; but he had none.  He had probably lost it in some wild battle of his stormy youth, fought almost to death against the huge Campagna sheep-dogs; or perhaps a wolf had got it, or perhaps he had never had a tail at all.  Ercole had probably forgotten, and it did not really matter much.

“Corbario is an assassin,” he said.  “Remember that, Nino.  As for his poor lady, she is a little lacking, or she would never have married him.  But she is a saint, and what do saints want with cleverness?  They go to paradise.  Does that need much sense?  We should all go if we could.  Why do you cock your head on one side and look at me like a Christian?  Are you trying to make me think you have a soul?  You are made of nothing but corn meal and water, and a little wool, poor beast!  But you have more sense than the Signora, and you are not an assassin, like her husband.”

At this, Nino threw himself upon his back with his four legs in the air and squirmed with sheer delight, showing his jagged teeth and the roof of a very terrible mouth, and emitting a series of wolfish snorts; after which he suddenly rolled over upon his feet again, shook himself till his shaggy coat bristled all over his body, walked sedately to the open door of the hut, and sat down to look at the weather.

“He is almost a Christian,” Ercole remarked under his breath, as if he were afraid the dog might hear the compliment and grow too vain.

For Ercole was a reticent man, and though he told Nino what he thought about people, he never told any one else.  Marcello was the only person to whom he ever showed any inclination to attach himself.  He regarded even the Contessa with suspicion, perhaps merely because she was a woman; and as for Aurora, girls did not count at all in his cosmogony.