For the Blood is the Life by F Marion Crawford

For the Blood is the Life by F Marion Crawford
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The moon lifts off the water and climbs the sky over Calabria.

Two men sit on the stones of an old tower above the coast, sipping the local wine, basking in the warm dark. Below them, where the rock runs down toward the sea, there is a mound in the earth.

One of them notices something in the gorge far below. He descends to look. The other sits, and watches, and says nothing.

When the first man climbs back up, his companion turns to him quietly and asks: do you want to hear the story of what you saw there, and also what you didn't?

First published in Collier's Weekly, 16 December 1905. Collected in Wandering Ghosts, 1911.

F. Marion Crawford (1854–1909) lived most of his adult life in Italy. In his own time he was one of the most widely read novelists in the English language. He is less remembered now than he deserves.