were stuck three knives of formidable length and breadth, in finely chased silver sheaths.  His muscular legs were encased in leathern gaiters, ornamented with gold and silver, and on his feet he wore broad turned-up slippers from Constantinople.  The dress was much the same as that which the Turks had found there a few years earlier, and which they soon amalgamated with their own.  It set off the captain’s vast breadth of shoulder and massive limbs, and as he stepped into his hired boat the idlers at the water-stairs gazed upon him with an admiration of which he was well aware, for besides being very splendidly dressed he looked as if he could have swept them all into the canal with a turn of his hand.

Without saying whither he was bound he directed the oarsman through the narrow channels until he reached the shallow lagoon.  The boatman asked whither he should go.

“To Murano,” answered the Greek.  “And keep over by Saint Michael’s, for the tide is low.”

The boatman had already understood that his passenger knew Venice almost as well as he.  The boat shot forward at a good rate under the bending oar, and in twenty minutes Aristarchi was at the entrance to the canal of San Piero and within sight of Beroviero’s house.

“Easy there,” said the Greek, holding up his hand.  “Do you know Murano well, my man?”

“As well as Venice, sir.”

“Whose house is that, which has the upper story built on columns over the footway?”

“It belongs to Messer Angelo Beroviero.  His glass-house takes up all the left aide of the canal as far as the bridge.”

“And beyond the bridge I can see two new houses, on the same side.  Whose are they?”

“They belong to the two sons of Messer Angelo Beroviero, who have furnaces of their own, all the way to the corner of the Grand Canal.”

“Is there a Grand Canal in Murano?” asked Aristarchi.

“They call it so,” answered the boatman with some contempt.  “The Beroviero have several houses on it, too.”

“It seems to me that Beroviero owns most of Murano,” observed the Greek.  “He must be very rich.”

“He is by far the richest.  But there is Alvise Trevisan, a rich man, too, and there are two or three others.  The island and all the glass-works are theirs, amongst them.”

“I have business with Messer Angelo,” said Aristarchi.  “But if he is such a great man he will hardly be in the glass-house.”

“I will ask,” answered the boatman.

In a few minutes he made his boat fast to the steps before the glass-house, went ashore and knocked at the door.  Aristarchi leaned back in his seat, chewing pistachio nuts, which he carried in an embroidered leathern bag at his belt.  His right hand played mechanically with the short string of thick amber beads which he used for counting.  The June sun blazed down upon his swarthy face.

At the grating beside the door the porter’s head appeared, partially visible behind the bars.