While settling this point, the conversation had with the Prince of India in the latter's tent at Zaribah arose to mind, and he recalled with particularity all that singular person said with reference to the accent observable in his speech. He also went over the description he himself had given the Prince of the house or castle from which he had been taken in childhood. A woman had borne him outdoors, under a blue sky, along a margin of white sand, an orchard on one hand, the sea on the other. He remembered the report of the waves breaking on the shore, the olive-green color of the trees in the orchard, and the battlemented gate of the castle; whereupon the Prince said the description reminded him of the eastern shore of Italy in the region of Brindisi.

It was a vague remark certainly; but now it made a deeper impression on the Emir than at the moment of its utterance and pointed his attention to Brindisi. The going to Italy, he argued, was really to get a warrant for the character he was to assume in Constantinople; that is, to obtain some knowledge of the country, its geography, political divisions, cities, rulers, and present conditions generally, without which the slightest cross-examination by any of the well-informed personages about the Emperor would shatter his pretensions in an instant. Then it was he fell into a most unusual mood.

Since the hour the turbaned rovers captured him he had not been assailed by a desire to see or seek his country and family. Who was his father? Was his mother living? Probably nothing could better define the profundity of the system underlying the organization of the Janissaries than that he had never asked those questions with a genuine care to have them solved. What a suppression of the most ordinary instincts of nature! How could it have been accomplished so completely? As a circumstance, its tendency is to confirm the theory that men are creatures of education and association.... Was his mother living? Did she remember him? Had she wept for him? What sort of being was she? If living, how old would she be? And he actually attempted a calculation. Calling himself twenty-six she might not be over forty-five. That was not enough to dim her eyes or more than slightly silver her hair; and as respects her heart, are not the affections of a mother flowers for culling by Death alone?

Such reflections never fail effect. A tenderness of spirit is the first token of their presence; then memory and imagination begin striving; the latter to bring the beloved object back, and the former to surround it with sweetest circumstances. They wrought with Mirza as with everybody else. The yearning they excited in him was a surprise; presently he determined to act on the Prince of India's suggestion, and betake himself to the eastern coast of Italy.

The story of the sack of a castle was of a kind to have wide circulation; at the same time this one was recent enough to be still in the memory of persons living. Finding the place of its occurrence was the difficulty. If in the vicinity of Brindisi--well, he would go and ask. The yearning spoken of did not come alone; it had for companion, Conscience, as yet in the background.

There were vessels bound for Venice. One was taking in water, after which it would sail for Otranto. It seemed a fleet craft, with a fair crew, and a complement of stout rowers. Otranto was south of Brindisi a little way, and the castle he wanted to hear of might have been situated between those cities. Who could tell? Besides, as an Italian nobleman, to answer inquiry in Constantinople, he would have to locate himself somewhere, and possibly the coast in question might accommodate him with both a location and a title. The result was he took passage to Otranto.

While there he kept his role of traveller, but was studious, and picked up a great fund of information bearing upon the part awaiting him. He lived and dressed well, and affected religious circles. It was the day when Italy was given over to the nobles--the day of robbers, fighting, intrigues and usurpations--of free lances and bold banditti--of government by the strong hand, of right determinable by might, of ensanguined Guelphs and Ghibellines. Of these the Emir kept clear.

By chance he fell in with an old man of secondary rank in the city much given to learning, an habitue of a library belonging to one of the monasteries. It came out ere long that the venerable person was familiar with the coast from Otranto to Brindisi, and beyond far as Polignano.

"It was in my sturdier days," the veteran said, with a dismal glance at his shrunken hands. "The people along the shore were much harried by Moslem pirates. Landing from their galleys, the depredators burned habitations, slew the men, and carried off such women as they thought would fetch a price. They even assaulted castles. At last we were driven to the employment of a defensive guard cooperative on land and water. I was a captain. Our fights with the rovers were frequent and fierce. Neither side showed quarter."

The reminiscence stimulated Mirza to inquiry. He asked the old man if he could mention a castle thus attacked.

"Yes, there was one belonging to Count Corti, a few leagues beyond Brindisi. The Count defended himself, but was slain."

"Had he a family?"

"A wife and a boy child."

"What became of them?"

"By good chance the Countess was in Brindisi attending a fete; she escaped, of course. The boy, two or three years of age, was made prisoner, and never heard of afterwards."

A premonition seized Mirza.

"Is the Countess living?"

"Yes. She never entirely recovered from the shock, but built a house near the site of the castle, and clearing a room in the ruins, turned it into a chapel. Every morning and evening she goes there, and prays for the soul of her husband, and the return of her lost boy."

"How long is it since the poor lady was so bereft?"

The narrator reflected, and replied: "Twenty-two or three years."

"May the castle be found?"

"Yes."

"Have you been to it?"

"Many times."

"How was it named?"

"After the Count--_Il Castillo di Corti_."

"Tell me something of its site."

"It is down close by the sea. A stone wall separates its front enclosure from the beach. Sometimes the foam of the waves is dashed upon the wall. Through a covered gate one looks out, and all is water. Standing on the tower, all landward is orchard and orchard--olive and almond trees intermixed. A great estate it was and is. The Countess, it is understood, has a will executed; if the boy does not return before her death, the Church is to be her legatee."

There was more of the conversation, covering a history of the Corti family, honorable as it was old--the men famous warriors, the women famous beauties.

Mirza dreamed through the night of the Countess, and awoke with a vague consciousness that the wife of the Pacha, the grace of whose care had been about him in childhood--a good woman, gentle and tender--was after all but a representative of the mother who had given him birth, just as on her part every mother is mercifully representative of God. Under strong feeling he took boat for Brindisi.

There he had no trouble in confirming the statements of his Otranto acquaintance. The Countess was still living, and the coast road northwardly would bring him to the ruins of her castle. The journey did not exceed five leagues.

What he might find at the castle, how long he would stay, what do, were so uncertain--indeed everything in the connection was so dependent upon conditions impossible of foresight, that he resolved to set out on foot. To this course he was the more inclined by the mildness of the weather, and the reputation of the region for freshness and beauty.

About noon he was fairly on the road. Persons whom he met--and they were not all of the peasant class--seeing a traveller jaunty in plumed cap, light blue camail, pointed buskins, and close-fitting hose the color of the camail, sword at his side, and javelin in hand, stayed to observe him long as he was in sight, never dreaming they were permitted to behold a favorite of one of the bloody Mahounds of the East.

Over hill and down shallow vales: through stone-fenced lanes; now in the shade of old trees; now along a seashore partially overflowed by languid waves, he went, lighter in step than heart, for he was in the mood by no means uncommon, when the spirit is prophesying evil unto itself. He was sensible of the feeling, and for shame would catch the javelin in the middle and whirl it about him defensively until it sung like a spinning-wheel; at times he stopped and, with his fingers in his mouth, whistled to a small bird as if it were a hunting hawk high in air.

Once, seeing a herd of goats around a house thatched and half-hidden in vines, he asked for milk. A woman brought it to him, with a slice of brown bread; and while he ate and drank, she stared at him in respectful admiration; and when he paid her in gold, she said, courtesying low: "A glad life to my Lord! I will pray the Madonna to make the wish good." Poor creature! She had no idea she was blessing one in whose faith the Prophet was nearer God than God's own Son.

At length the road made an abrupt turn to the right, bringing him to a long stretch of sandy beach. Nearly as he could judge, it was time for the castle to appear, and he was anxious to make it before sundown. Yet in the angle of the wood he saw a wayside box of stone sheltering an image of the Virgin, with the Holy Child in its arms. Besides being sculptured better than usual, the figures were covered with flowers in wreath and bouquet. A dressed slab in front of the structure, evidently for the accommodation of worshippers, invited him to rest, and he took the seat, and looking up at the mother, she appeared to be looking at him. He continued his gaze, and presently the face lost its stony appearance--stranger still, it smiled. It was illusion, of course, but he arose startled, and moved on with quickened step. The impression went with him. Why the smile? He did not believe in images: much less did he believe in the Virgin, except as she was the subject of a goodly story. And absorbed in the thought, he plodded on, leaving the sun to go down unnoticed.

Thereupon the shadows thickened in the woods at his left hand, while the sound of the incoming waves at his right increased as silence laid its