like well-trained animals they rose to their feet, clumsily, but as fast as they could under the handicap of trembling limbs and heavy chains. two were slow in obeying, and those she struck across the face with a small whip, till they whined with pain.

they stood there in silence, twenty odd blind men, chained against as many pillars of stone; and then the woman, standing in the middle of them, started to sing. it was a well-trained voice, but metallic, and her high notes had in them the cry of a wild animal. no feminine softness there. she sang from an italian opera, and i knew that i had heard that song before. while she sang, her audience waited silently. at last she finished, and they started to applaud. shrunken hands beat noisily against shrunken hands.

she seemed to watch them carefully, as though she were measuring the degree of their appreciation. one man did not satisfy her. she went over and dug into his face with long strokes of those long red nails until his face was red and her fingers bloody. and when she finished her second song that man clapped louder than any of them. he had learned his lesson.

she ended by giving them each another roll and a dipper of water. then, lantern and basket in her hands, she walked away and disappeared down the tunnel. the blind men, crying and cursing in their impotent rage, sank down on their stone beds.

i went to my friend, and took his hand.

"george! george seabrook!" i whispered.

he sat up and cried, "who calls me? who is there?"

i told him, and he started to cry. at last he became quiet enough to talk to me. what he told me, with slight variants, was the story of all the men there and all the men who had been there but who had died. each man had been master for a day or a week. each had found the cellar door and had come to the donna marchesi for the key. some had been suspicious and had written their thoughts on the wall of their bedroom. but one and all had, in the end, found their curiosity more than they could resist and had opened the door. on the other side they had been overpowered and chained to a pillar, and there they had remained till they died. some of them lived longer than the rest. smith of boston had been there over two years, though he was coughing badly and did not think that he could last much longer. seabrook told me their names. they were the best blood of america, with three englishmen and one frenchman.

"and are you all blind?" i whispered, dreading the answer.

"yes. that happens the first night we are here. she does it with her nails."

"and she comes every night?"

"every night. she feeds us and sings to us and we applaud. when one of us dies, she unchains the body, and throws it down a hole somewhere. she talks to us about that hole sometimes and brags that she is going to fill it up before she stops."

"but who is helping her?"

"i think it is the real-estate man. of course, the old devils upstairs help. i think that they must drug us. some of the men say that they went to sleep in their beds and woke, chained to their posts."

my voice trembled as i bent over and whispered in his ear, "what would you do, george, if she came and sang, and you found that you were not chained? you and the other men not chained? what would you men do, george?"

"ask them," he snarled. "ask them, one at a time. but i know what i would do. i know!"

and he started to cry, because he could not do it the next second; cried from rage and helplessness till the tears ran from his empty sockets.

"does she always come at the same time?"

"as far as i know. but time is nothing to us. we just wait for death."

"are the chains locked?"

"yes. and she must have the key. but we could file the links if only we had files. if only each of us had a file, we could get free. perhaps the man upstairs has a key, but i hardly think so."

"did you write on that pretty wall upstairs, the whitewashed wall?"

"i did; i think we all did. one man wrote a sonnet to the woman, verses in her honor, telling about her beautiful eyes. he raved about that poem for hours while he was dying. did you ever see it on the wall?"

"i did not see it. the old people whitewash the walls before each new master comes."

"i thought so."

"are you sure you would know what to do, george, if she sang to you and you were loose?"

"yes, we would know."

so i left him, promising an end to the matter as soon as i could arrange it.