When the pale facade of Casa Felice was visible once more, detaching itself from the surrounding darkness, she said to the boy carelessly:

"Where do you put the boat at night?"

"The signora has not seen?"

"No."

"Under the house. There is deep water there. One can swim for five minutes without coming out into the open."

"I should like to see that place. Can I get out of the boat there?"

"Si, signora. There is a staircase leading into the piazza by the waterfall."

"Then row in."

"Si, signora."

He was beginning to sing again, but suddenly he stopped, looked over his shoulder and listened.

"What is it?" she asked quickly.

"There is a boat, signora."

"Where."

She looked into the darkness but saw nothing.

"Close to the house, signora."

"But how do you know?"

"I heard the oars. The man in the boat was not rowing, but just as I began to sing he began to row. When I stopped singing he stopped rowing."

"You didn't see the boat?"

"No, signora. It carries no light."

He looked at her mysteriously.

"_It may be the contrabbandieri_."

"Smugglers?"

"Yes."

He turned his head over his shoulder and whistled, in a peculiar way.

There was no reply. Then he bent down over the gunwale of the boat till his ear nearly touched the water, and listened.

"The boat has stopped. It must be near us."

His whole body seemed quivering with attentive life, like a terrier's when it stands to be unchained.

"Might it not be a fisherman?" asked Lady Holme.

He shook his head.

"This is not the hour."

"Some tourists, perhaps, making an excursion?"

"It is too far. They never come here at night."

His eyes stared, his attitude was so intensely alert and his manner so mysterious that, despite her desperate preoccupation, Lady Holme found herself distracted for a moment. Her mind was detached from herself, and fixed upon this hidden boat and its occupant or occupants.

"You think it is _contrabbandieri_?" she whispered. He nodded.

"I have been one, signora."

"You!"

"Yes, when I was a boy, in the winter. Once, when we were running for the shore, on a December night, the _carabinieri_ fired on us and killed Gaetano Cremona."

"Your companion?"

"Yes. He was sixteen and he died. The boat was full of his blood."

She shuddered.

"Row in," she said. "That boat must have gone."

"Non, signora. It has not. It is close by and the oars are out of the water."

He spoke with certainty, as if he saw the boat. Then, reluctantly, he dipped his oars in the lake, and rowed towards the house, keeping his head half turned and staring into the darkness with eyes that were still full of mystery and profound attention.

Lady Holme looked over the water too, but she saw nothing upon its calm surface.

"Go into the boat-house," she said.

Paolo nodded without speaking. His lips were parted.

"Chi e la?" she heard him whisper to himself.

They were close to the house now. Its high, pale front, full of shuttered windows, loomed over them, and the roar of the waterfall was loud in their ears. Paolo turned the boat towards his right, and, almost directly, Lady Holme saw a dark opening in the solid stone blocks on which the house was built. The boat glided through it into cover, and the arrow of light at the prow pierced ebon blackness, while the plash of the oars made a curious sound, full of sudden desolation and weariness. A bat flitted over the arrow of light and vanished, and the head of a swimming rat was visible for a moment, pursued by a wrinkle on the water.

"How dark it is here," Lady Holme said in a low voice. "And what strange noises there are."

There was terror in the sound of the waterfall heard under this curving roof of stone. It sounded like a quantity of disputing voices, quarrelling in the blackness of the night. The arrow of light lay on a step, and the boat's prow grated gently against a large ring of rusty iron.

"And you tie up the boat here at night?" she asked as she got up.