“Would he really?” asked Corbario with a little interest.

Ercole looked at him and nodded, but said no more, and presently the whole party of men went back to Rome, leaving him to the loneliness of the sand-banks and the sea.

Then Ercole came back to the gap and stood still a little while, and his dog sat bolt upright beside him.

“Nino,” he said at last, in a rather regretful tone, “I gave you a good character.  What could I say before those gentlemen?  But I tell you this, you are growing old.  And don’t answer that I am getting old too, for that is my business.  If your nose were what it was once, we should know the truth by this time.  Smell that!”

Ercole produced a small green morocco pocket-book, of the sort made to hold a few visiting cards and a little paper money, and held it to Nino’s muzzle.

Nino smelt it, looked up to his master’s face inquiringly, smelt it again, and then, as if to explain that it did not interest him, lay down in the sand with his head on his forepaws.

“You see!” growled Ercole.  “You cannot even tell whether it belonged to the boy or to Corbario.  An apoplexy on you!  You understand nothing!  Ill befall the souls of your dead, you ignorant beast!”

Nino growled, but did not lift his head.

“You understand that,” said Ercole, discontentedly.  “If you were a Christian you would stick a knife into me for insulting your dead!  Yet you cannot tell whose pocket-book this is!  And if I knew, I should know something worth knowing.”

The pocket-book disappeared in the interior recesses of Ercole’s waistcoat.  It was empty and bore no initial, and he could not remember to have seen it in Corbario’s or Marcello’s hands, but he was quite sure that it belonged to one of them.  He was equally sure that if he showed it to Corbario the latter would at once say that it was Marcello’s, and would take it away from him, so he said nothing about it.  He had found it in the sand, a little way up the bank, during his first search after Marcello’s disappearance.

Ercole’s confidence in the good intentions of his fellow-men was not great; he was quite lacking in the sort of charity which believeth all things, and had a large capacity for suspicion of everybody and everything; he held all men to be liars and most women to be something worse.

“Men are at least Christians,” he would say to Nino, “but a female is always a female.”

If he took a liking for any one, as for Marcello, he excused himself for the weakness on the ground that he was only human after all, and in his heart he respected his dog for snarling at everybody without discrimination.  There was no doubt, however, that he felt a sort of attachment for the boy, and he admitted the failing while he deplored it.  Besides, he detested Corbario, and had felt that his own common sense was insulted by the fact that Folco seemed devoted to Marcello.  The suspicion that Folco had got