Then the men thought that the boy was trying in his turn to put a jest
on them, and would have beaten him. In a moment, however, they heard
something coming slowly up the ladder, so they laughed no more, but all
turned very pale and sat still and listened. And only the boy remembered
to cross himself.

The footsteps came nearer. The door was pushed stumblingly open, as by
one that fumbles and is not sure of his way. Then the man that had been
dead and drowned, of whom they had made their sport, came in and sat
down at the boy's place, the seventh at the table. Whereupon there was a
great silence. None spoke, but all looked; for none, save the boy only,
could withdraw his eyes from those of the dead man. Colder and chillier
flowed the blood in their veins, till it ceased to flow at all, and
froze about their hearts.

Whereat the boy flung himself shrieking into a boat and rowed away by
the power of his own saint, Santa Caterina of Siena. He met some
fishermen in a sailing boat, but it was the third day before any dared
row to the lonely Casa on the mud bank. When they did go, three men
climbed up the posts at different sides, for the ladder had fallen away.
They went not in, but only looked through the window. They saw indeed
six men, who sat round the platter of cold polenta. But the seventh, who
sat at the bottom in the boy's place, shone as though he had been on
fire, leaning back in his chair as one that laughed and made merry at a
jest. But the six were fallen silent and very sober.

So the three men that looked fell back from off the platform into the
water as dead men; and had not their companions been active men of
Malamocco, they too had been drowned. So there to this day in the lonely