Slipping out quite unobserved by the kitchen door into a little courtyard, they passed into an unlighted back street through a postern gate whereof the lad had the key.

At the end of the street they came to a canal, where David, who talked Italian perfectly, hailed a boat, into which they entered without exciting remark.

For this sharp youth pointed to their cloaks and told the boatman that they were gallants engaged upon some amorous adventure.
On they rowed down the silent lanes of water, through the slumbrous city of palaces, turning here, turning there, till soon they lost all knowledge of the direction in which they headed.

At length David whispered to them that they drew near the place where they must land.
Everybody seemed to speak in a whisper that heavy night, even the folk, generally so light of heart and quick of tongue, who sat on the steps or beneath the porticoes of their houses gasping for air, and the passers-by on the _rivas_ or footwalks that bordered the canals.

At a sign from David the boat turned inward and grated against the steps of a marble quay.