Produced by Beth Constantine, Juliet Sutherland, Charles
Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
[Illustration: "I DO NOT KNOW WHY I HAVE SUMMONED YOU," SHE SAID]
By REX BEACH
Author of "The Spoilers," "The Barrier," "The Silver Horde," Etc.
"I DO NOT KNOW WHY I HAVE SUMMONED YOU,' SHE SAID Frontispiece
The train from Palermo was late. Already long, shadowy fingers werereaching down the valleys across which the railroad track meandered.Far to the left, out of an opalescent sea, rose the fairy-like LipariIslands, and in the farthest distance Stromboli lifted its smoking coneabove the horizon. On the landward side of the train, as it reeled andsquealed along its tortuous course, were gray and gold Sicilianvillages perched high against the hills or drowsing among fields ofartichoke and sumac and prickly pear.
To one familiar with modern Sicilian railway trains the journeyeastward from Palermo promises no considerable discomfort, buttwenty-five years ago it was not to be lightly undertaken—not to beundertaken at all, in fact, without an unusual equipment of patienceand a resignation entirely lacking in the average Anglo-Saxon. It wasnot surprising, therefore, that Norvin Blake, as the hours draggedalong, should remark less and less upon the beauties of the island andmore and more upon the medieval condition of the rickety railroad coachin which he was shaken and buffeted about. He shifted himself to aneasier position upon the seat and lighted a cheroot; for although thiswas his first glimpse of Sicily, he had watched the same villages comeand go all through a long, hot afternoon, had seen the same groves oforange and lemon and dust-green olive-trees, the same fields of Barbaryfigs, the same rose-grown garden spots, until he was heartily t