“Then you must be saving money.”

“Yes; we are laying money by.  Some day, I suppose, we shall marry, and our wives must have homes.  Besides, sometimes we are lazy and don’t work.  One must have some pleasure, you know.”

“Would you like to enter service?”

“No, signor.  We prefer being our own masters; to take a fare or leave it as we please.”

“Your boat is a very fast one.  You went at a tremendous rate when the galley was after us the other night.”

“The boat is like others,” Giuseppi said carelessly; “but most men can row fast when the alternative is ten ducats one way or a prison the other.”

“Then there would be no place where I could always find you in the daytime if I wanted you?”

“No, signor; there would be no saying where we might be.  We have sometimes regular customers, and it would not pay us to disappoint them, even if you paid us five times the ordinary fare.  But we could always meet you at night anywhere, when you choose to appoint.”

“But how can I appoint,” the passenger said irritably, “if I don’t know where to find you?”

Giuseppi was silent for a stroke or two.

“If your excellency would write in figures, half past ten or eleven, or whatever time we should meet you, just at the base of the column of the palace—­the corner one on the Piazzetta—­we should be sure to be there sometime or other during the day, and would look for it.”

“You can read and write, then?” the passenger asked.

“I cannot do that, signor,” Giuseppi said, “but I can make out figures.  That is necessary to us, as how else could we keep time with our customers?  We can read the sundials, as everyone else can; but as to reading and writing, that is not for poor lads like us.”

The stranger was satisfied.  Certainly every one could read the sundials; and the gondoliers would, as they said, understand his figures if he wrote them.

“Very well,” he said.  “It is probable I shall generally know, each time I discharge you, when I shall want you again; but should there be any change, I will make the figures on the base of the column at the corner of the Piazzetta, and that will mean the hour at which you are to meet me that night at the usual place.”

Nothing more was said, until the gondola arrived at the same spot at which it had landed the passenger on the previous occasion.

“I shall be back in about the same time as before,” the fare said when he alighted.

As he strode away into the darkness, Francis followed him.  He was shoeless, for at that time the lower class seldom wore any protection to the feet, unless when going a journey over rough ground.  Among the gondoliers shoes were unknown; and Francis himself generally took his off, for coolness and comfort, when out for the evening in his boat.

He kept some distance behind the man he was following, for as there were no hedges or inclosures, he could make out his figure against the sky at a considerable distance.  As Francis had expected, he did not make towards the village, but kept along the island at a short distance from the edge of the water.