rid of his stepson in order to get his fortune was therefore positively delightful, accompanied as it was by the conviction that he should one day prove his enemy a murderer.  Perhaps if he could have known what Folco Corbario was suffering, he might have been almost satisfied, but he had no means of guessing that.  In his opinion the man knew what had become of Marcello, and could be made to tell if proper means were used.  At night Ercole put himself to sleep by devising the most horrible tortures for his master, such as no fortitude could resist, and by trying to guess what the wretched man would say when his agony forced him to confess the truth.

He was almost sure by this time that Marcello was dead, though how Folco could have killed him, carried off his body to a great distance and buried him, without ever absenting himself from the cottage, was more than Ercole could imagine.  He paid Corbario’s skill the compliment of believing that he had not employed any accomplice, but had done the deed alone.

How?  That was the question.  Ercole knew his dog well enough, and was perfectly sure that if the body had been concealed anywhere within a mile of the cottage Nino would have found it out, for the dog and his master had quartered every foot of the ground within three days after Marcello had been lost.  It was utterly, entirely impossible that Folco, without help, could have dragged the dead boy farther.  When he had gone on his pretended search he had not been alone; one of the men had ridden with him, and had never lost sight of him, as Ercole easily ascertained without seeming to ask questions.  Ercole had obtained a pretty fair knowledge of Corbario’s movements on that day, and it appeared that he had not been absent from the cottage more than half an hour at any time before he went to look for Marcello.

“If Corbario himself had disappeared in that way,” said Ercole to himself and Nino, “it would be easy to understand.  We should know that the devil had carried him off.”

But no such supernatural intervention of the infernal powers could be supposed in Marcello’s case, and Ercole racked his brains to no purpose, and pondered mad schemes for carrying Corbario off out of Rome to a quiet place where he would extract the truth from him, and he growled at the impossibility of such a thing, and fell to guessing again.

In the magnificent library of the villa on the Janiculum, Folco was guessing, too, and with no better result.  But because he could not guess right, and could get no news of Marcello, his eyes were growing hollow and his cheeks wan.

The lawyers came and talked about the will, and explained to him that all the great property was his, unless Marcello came back, and that in any case he was to administer it.  They said that if no news of the boy were obtained within a limited time, the law must take it for granted that he had perished in some unaccountable way.  Folco shook his head.