Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE GREEN GATE. CHAPTER I. The train was rushing through one of the many tunnels on the road across the Apennines from Bologna to Florence. In a second-class carriage the flame of the dim oil lamp in the roof was just dying out. It flashed up fitfully now and then, as if to look after matters in the carriage; and at each revival a fat, middle-aged Italian woman, leaning back against the black cushions in a corner, opened her sleepy eyes, only to close them immediately. By her sat a puny little man, the end of a cigar held loosely between the fingers of the hand that hung down at his side, his hat upon the back of his head, ?evidently, judging from the tone of the conversation lately carried on between himself and the lady, her husband. In another corner crouched a Frenchman, his knees drawn up almost to his chin, his feet cased in embroidered slippers; the travelling-bag hanging above him proclaimed him a commercial traveller. The third corner was occupied by a man who had entered the carriage at Poretta, and had transferred a number of stones from his various pockets to a small wallet which he carried, already near'y full of such treasures. From the colour of his hair and beard, indeed, from the entire character of his face and figure, he would have passed for Italian, and he exchanged several fluent remarks in that tongue with the guard before the train left the station at Poretta. Immediately afterwards, however, he had addressed a young man sitting opposite him in German, receiving from him several curt answers in, the same tongue, which provoked the smiling observation,
I was not mistaken, then, in supposing you a countryman of mine ? Only a German could cast such keen and longing glances from the carriage- window during the short delay at the station. Confess t…