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Three young friends, who had under-taken an Italian tour together last year, visited the Studii Museum at Naples, where the various antique objects exhumed from the ashes of Pompeii and Herculaneum have been collected.

They scattered through the halls, inspecting the mosaics, the bronzes, the frescoes detached from the walls of the dead city, each following the promptings of his own particular taste in such matters; and whenever one of the party encountered something especially curious, he summoned his comrades with cries of delight, much to the scandal of the taciturn English visitors, and the staid bourgeois who studiously thumbed their catalogues.

But the youngest of the three, who had paused before a glass case, appeared wholly deaf to the exclamations of his comrades, so deeply had he become absorbed in contemplation. The object that he seemed to be examining with so much interest was a black mass of coagulated cinders, bearing a hollow imprint. One might easily have mistaken it for the fragment of some statue-mould, broken in the casting. The trained eye of an artist would have readily therein recognized the impression of a perfect bosom and a flank as faultless in its outlines as a Greek statue. It is well known, indeed the commonest traveller's guide will tell you, that this lava, in cooling about the body of a woman, preserved its charming contours. Thanks to the caprice of the eruption that destroyed four cities, that noble form, though crumbled to dust nearly two thousand years ago, has come down to us; the rounded loveliness of a throat has lived through the centuries in which so many empires perished without even leaving the traces of their existence; chance-imprinted upon the volcanic scoriæ, that seal of beauty remains unobliterated.

Finding that he still remained absorbed in contemplation, Octavian's friends returned to where he stood; and Max, touching his shoulder, caused him to start like one surprised in a secret. Evidently Octavian had not been aware of the approach of Max or Fabio.

"Come, Octavian," exclaimed Max, "do not stay lingering whole hours before every cabinet, else we shall get late for the train and miss seeing Pompeii to-day."

"What is our comrade looking at?" asked Fabio, drawing near. "Ah, the imprint found in the house of Arrius Diomedes!" And he turned a peculiar, quick glance upon Octavian.

Octavian slightly blushed, took Max's arm, and the visit terminated without further incident. On leaving the Studii Museum, the three friends entered a corricolo, and were driven to the railway station. The corricolo, with its great red wheels, its tracket seat studded with brass nails, and its thin, spirited horse harnessed like a Spanish mule, and galloping at full speed over the great slabs of lava pavement, is too familiar to need description here, especially as we are not recording impressions of a trip to Naples, but the simple narrative of an adventure which, although true, may seem both fantastic and incredible in the extreme.