When he had heard, as every one had, how Marcello had been brought to Rome on the tail of a wine-cart, he had been sure that the boy had been laid upon it while the cart was standing before Paoluccio’s inn in the night.  He knew the road well, and the ways of the carters, and that they rarely stopped anywhere else between Frascati and Rome.  Again and again he had been on the point of tramping up from the seashore to the place, to see whether he could not find some clue to Marcello’s accident there, but something had prevented him, some old dislike of returning to the neighbourhood after such a long absence.  He knew why he had not gone, but he had not confided the reason even to Nino, who was told most things.  He had, moreover, been tolerably sure that nothing short of thumb-screws would extract any information from Paoluccio or his wife, for he knew his own people.  The only thing that surprised him was that the boy should ever have left the inn alive after being robbed of everything he had about him that was worth taking.

Moreover, since Marcello had been found, and was alive and well, it was of very little use to try and discover exactly what had happened to him after he had been last seen by the shore.  But the aspect of things had changed since Ercole had heard the sailor’s story, and his wish to see the place where the boy had been hidden so long overcame any repugnance he felt to visiting a neighbourhood which had unpleasant associations with his younger years.

He sat and waited at the door, and before the sun rose a young woman came round the house with the big key and opened the place, just as Regina had done in old days.  She looked at Ercole, and he looked at her, and neither said anything as she went about her work, sprinkling the floor with water and then sweeping it, and noisily pulling the heavy benches about.  When this operation was finished, Ercole rose and went in, and sat down at the end of a table.  He took some bread and cheese from his canvas bag and began to eat, using his clasp-knife.

“If you wish wine,” said the woman, “you will have to wait till the master comes down.”

Ercole only answered by raising his head and throwing out his chin, which means “no” in gesture language.  He threw pieces of the bread and the rind of the cheese to his dog.  Nino caught each fragment in the air with a snap that would have lamed a horse for a month.  The woman glanced nervously at the animal, each time she heard his jagged teeth close.

Paoluccio appeared in due time, without coat or waistcoat, and with his sleeves rolled up above the elbows, as if he had been washing.  If he had, the operation had succeeded very imperfectly.  He glanced at Ercole as he passed in.

“Good-morning,” he said, for he made it a point to be polite to customers, even when they brought their own food.

“Good-morning,” answered Ercole, looking at him curiously.