“Probably he didn’t remember me.”

“Probably; but there are possibilities about the action.  He might have been warned against you.”

“There was nobody to warn him.  He had not yet seen his niece, nor spoken with her.  Who else could have warned him—­except Bendigo Redmayne himself?”

Peter did not pursue the subject.  He shut his book, yawned, took snuff, and declared himself ready for a meal.  The long day passed and both men turned in early and slept till daybreak.

Before noon they had left Baveno on a steamer and were crossing the blue depths of Maggiore.  Brendon had never seen the Italian lakes before and he fell silent in the presence of such beauty; nor did Mr. Ganns desire to talk.  They sat together and watched the panorama unfold, the hills and gorges, the glory of the light over earth and water, the presence of man, his little homes upon the mountains, his little barques upon the lake.

At Luino they left the steamer and proceeded to Tresa.  Beside the railroad, on this brief instalment of the journey, there stood lofty palisades of close wire netting hung with bells.  Peter, who had travelled here twenty years earlier, explained that they were erected as a safeguard against the eternal smuggling between Switzerland and Italy.

“‘Only man is vile’ in fact,” he concluded and woke a passing wave of bitterness in his companion’s spirit.

“And our life is concerned with his vileness,” Mark answered.  “I hate myself sometimes and wish I was a grocer or a linen draper or even a soldier or sailor.  It’s degrading to let your life’s work depend on the wickedness of your fellow creatures, Ganns.  I hope a time is coming when our craft will be as obsolete as bows and arrows.”

The elder laughed.

“What does Goethe say somewhere?” he asked.  “That if man endures for a million years, he’ll never lack obstacles to give him trouble, or the pressure of need to make him conquer them.  Then there’s Montaigne—­you ought to read Montaigne—­wisest of men.  He’ll tell you that human wisdom has never reached the perfection of conduct that itself prescribes; and could it arrive there, it would still dictate to itself others beyond.  In a word, the world will never be short of crooks while human nature lasts, nor yet of men trained to lay them by the heels.  Crime will continue, in some form or other, as long as men do; and as the criminal gets cleverer, so must we.”

“I think better of human nature,” answered Mark and his friend applauded him.

“Quite right, my boy—­at your age,” he said.

They wound over Lugano and came in evening light to its northern shore.  Then once more they took train, climbed aloft, and fell at last to Menaggio on Como’s brink.

“Now,” said Peter, “I guess we’ll leave our traps here and beat it to Villa Pianezzo right away.  We’ll scare the old boy a bit, but can tell him things all fell right and so we found that we could jog along a week before we thought to do so.  Not a word that I think him to be in danger.”