Excerpt from The Green Gate: A Romance The train was rushing through one of the many tunnels on the road across the Apennines from Bologna to Florence. In a second-class carriage the flame of the dim oil lamp in the roof was just dying out. It flashed up fitfully now and then, as if to look after matters in the carriage; and at each revival a fat, middle-aged Italian woman, leaning back against the black cushions in a corner, opened her sleepy eyes, only to close them immediately. By her sat a puny little man, the end of a eiger held loosely between the fingers of the hand that hung down at his side, his hat upon the back of his head, - evidently, judging from the tone of the conversation lately carried on between himself and the lady, her husband. In another corner crouched a Frenchman, his knees drawn up almost to his chin, his feet eased in embroidered slippers; the travelling-bag hanging above him proclaimed him a commercial traveller. The third corner was occupied by a man who had entered the carriage at Poretta, and had transferred a number of stones from his various pockets to a small wallet which he carried, already nearly full of such treasures. From the colour of his hair and beard, indeed, from the entire character of his face and figure, he would have passed for Italian, and he exchanged several fluent remarks in that tongue with the guard before the train left the station at Poretta. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.