reality his straitened means may have had something to do with the step.
At all events he scratched his major rather severely in the duel which
took place, and has the reputation of a dangerous man with the sabre. It
is said that the major's wife had something to do with the story. At
present San Miniato is about thirty years of age. His only known vice is
gambling, which is perhaps a chief source of income to him. Every one
agrees in saying that he is the type of the honourable player, and that,
if he wins on the whole, he owes his winnings to his superior coolness
and skill. The fact that he gambles rather lends him an additional
interest in the eyes of Beatrice, whose mother often plays and who would
like to play herself.

Ruggiero, who is to be San Miniato's boatman this summer, is waiting
outside the Count's door, until that idle gentleman wakes from his late
sleep and calls him. The final agreement is yet to be made, and Ruggiero
makes calculations upon his fingers as he sits on the box in the
corridor. The Count wants a boat and three sailors by the month and if
he is pleased, will keep them all the season. It became sufficiently
clear to Ruggiero during the first interview that his future employer
did not know the difference between a barge and a felucca, and he has
had ocular demonstration that the Count cannot swim, for he has seen him
in the water by the bathing-houses--a thorough landsman at all points.
But there are two kinds of landsmen, those who are afraid, and those who
are not, as Ruggiero well knows. The first kind are amusing and the
sailors get more fun out of them than they know of; the second kind are
dangerous and are apt to get more out of the sailor than they pay for,
by bullying him and calling him a coward. But on the whole Ruggiero,
being naturally very daring and singularly indifferent to life as a
possession, hopes that San Miniato may turn out to be of the
unreasonably reckless rather than of the tiresomely timid class, and is