FROM NAPLES This is the third day of sirocco, heavy-clouded, sunless.

All the colour has gone out of Naples; the streets are dusty and stifling.

I long for the mountains and the sea.
To-morrow I shall leave by the Messina boat, which calls at Paola.

It is now more than a twelvemonth since I began to think of Paola, and an image of the place has grown in my mind.

I picture a little _marina_; a yellowish little town just above; and behind, rising grandly, the long range of mountains which guard the shore of Calabria.