34

LIFE OF COLONEL MACERONI.

Onward I proceeded and arrived somewhat out of breath,but far more out of mental ease, at the house of my desti-nation.

At the moment of my entrance the family were on thepoint of sitting down to supper. I could not tell my storyuntil the moving of chairs upon the marble floor, as eachperson was being seated, had ceased their grating sounds.But before even that had quite subsided, my ears wereassailed with piercing shrieks of some one in agonized dis-tress. Instantly I seized a gun, of which there were severalin the corners of the room, and calling to the lads to followme, ran with full speed across the cemetery to the gatewhich I had just traversed. There, writhing on the ground,weltering in his blood, and in the agonies of death, wefound our Greek acquaintance of the faro table. He hadbeen robbed and plundered of his rings, and watch, and allthat he may have had about him. He alone, it wouldappear, the assassins had been waiting for; but the absurddisguise with which they had encumbered their personsproved the means of their detection. Although we searchedwith all the activity our legs could furnish, every nook andcorner of the vicinity of the spot, nothing could we find.Thanks to the intervention of the Venetian Ambassador, thepolice detected the murderers, who were both subsequentlytried and executed. One of them was a student in divinity,the other, a valet to the bishop; both gamblers —that’senough.

I must not quit Orvieto without speaking of a stupendouswell, from which a rich convent receives its supply of excel-lent water. * It is about one hundred feet deep, and forty indiameter. The water is neither drawn up by pumps norbuckets, but is carried along a spiral inclined plane, downwhich mules and asses descend to the bottom, where there isa spacious chamber and a stream of water. The barrels