“You sealed it with a glass seal,” he observed.  “It would not be hard to make another.”

“Do you think it would be so easy?” asked Beroviero, who had made the seal himself many years ago.

Zorzi held the impression nearer to the lamp and scrutinised it closely.

“No one will have a chance to try,” he said, with a slight gesture of indifference.  “It might not be so easy.”

The old man looked at him a moment, as if hesitating, and then put the packet back into the box and locked the latter with the key that hung from his neck by a small silver chain.

“I trust you,” he said, and he gave the box to Zorzi, to be deposited in the hole.

Zorzi stood up, and taking a little tow from the supply used for cleaning the blow-pipes, he dipped it into the oil of the lamp and proceeded to grease the box carefully before hiding it.

“It would rust,” he explained.

He laid the box in the hole and covered it with earth before placing the stone over it.

“Be careful to make the stone lie quite flat,” said Angelo, bending down and gathering his gown off the floor in a bunch at his knees.  “If it does not lie flat, the stone will move when the boys tread on it, and they may think of taking it up.”

“It is very heavy,” answered the young man.  “It was as much as I could do to heave it up.  You need not be afraid of the boys.”

“It is not a very safe place, I fear, after all,” returned Beroviero doubtfully.  “Be sure to leave no marks of the crowbar, and no loose earth near it.”

The heavy slab slipped into its bed with a soft thud.  Zorzi took the lamp and examined the edges.  One of them was a little chipped by the crowbar, and he rubbed it with the greasy tow and scattered dust over it.  Then he got a cypress broom and swept the earth carefully away into a heap.  Beroviero himself brought the shovel and held it close to the stones while Zorzi pushed the loose earth upon it.

“Carry it out and scatter it in the garden,” said the old man.

It was the first time that he had allowed his affection for Zorzi to express itself so strongly, for he was generally a very cautious person.  He took the young man’s hand and held it a moment, pressing it kindly.

“It was not I who made the law against strangers, and it was not meant for men like you,” he added.

Zorzi knew how much this meant from such a master and he would have found words for thanks, had he been able; but when he tried, they would not come.

“You may trust me,” was all he could say.

Beroviero left him, and went down the dark corridor with the firm step of a man who knows his way without light.