The Amulet

Only at intervals a dull sound like the grating noise of a file seemed to

issue from the old edifice; but it was so indistinct and so often

interrupted that it was not sufficient to destroy the solitude and silence

of the place.

Suddenly two heavy strokes, as if from a hammer, resounded through the

garden. Some one had knocked at the exterior door for admittance.

A few moments afterwards a man appeared on the staircase of the pavilion,

and descended into the garden.

He was tall and slender; his hair and beard were red, and a red moustache

covered his upper lip. His cheeks, though sunken and emaciated, were very

red. His eyes were wild in their expression. His arms and legs were of

extraordinary length; his movements were heavy and slow, as though his

limbs had been dislocated and his muscles without strength.

His dress denoted him to be a menial: he wore a vest of black leather, a

red doublet and breeches of the same color, without embroidery or

ornament.

At this moment his sleeves were rolled up, and his thin arms were bare to

the elbows. In his hand he held a file, and apparently he had been

interrupted in some urgent work by the knock at the door. Having reached

the outer door, he drew a key from his doublet, and asked in Italian: "Who knocks?"

"Open the door, Julio; it is your companion Bernardo," was the reply in

the same tongue.

"Of course, on the way you stopped at the Camel, and drank some pots of

Hamburg beer? Did you bring me as much as a pint?" asked the man with the

red beard. "Nothing? have you nothing? I have worked until I am exhausted;

I am dying of hunger, and no one thinks of me. Let me see the spring."

Saying these words, he took from his companion's hands a bent steel spring

and examined it attentively, closing and opening it as if to judge of its

form and power of resistance.

Bernardo was a deformed man of low stature; the projection on his back

might be styled a hump--it was so prominent. His physiognomy denoted

pusillanimity; but there was, at the same time, a malicious sparkle in his

eye, and it was with a mocking smile that he contemplated the man with the

red beard.

The latter said to him in a commanding tone: "The spring appears to be

good. Go bring me a pint of Rhenish wine from the Saint George."

"You know well that our master has forbidden it. Let me go; the signor

ordered me to return immediately to the factory."