Crossword-Solution: TOPO 4 letters, 37 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 6

Edgar chose to frame the play upon the Italian form of the story, where the impostor is a starveling poet, nicknamed Signor Topo, or Master Ratton, because his poverty had brought him to live in a hay-loft.

Fra Cipolla had a servant, whom some called Guccio[313] Balena,[314] others Guccio Imbratta[315] and yet others Guccia Porco[316] and who was such a scurvy knave that Lipo Topo[317] never wrought his like, inasmuch as his master used oftentimes to jest of him with his cronies and say, 'My servant hath in him nine defaults, such that, were one of them in Solomon or Aristotle or Seneca, it would suffice to mar all their worth, all their wit and all their sanctity.

This plain has a general fall toward the northeast, and beyond the city it slopes gently northward for several miles toward the Topo Grande River, and then southeastward to join the great coastal plain of the Gulf of Mexico.

The prisoner saw no more of his little sedate visitor that evening; but, with night and sleep, the voice again took up the tale of his haunting; and this time, somehow, to his dreaming senses, Messer Topo seemed to be the medium of its piteous conveyance to him.

Without removing his hand, he called softly: ’Topo! Messer Topo!’ Instantly a little sharp snout, tipped with a chilly nose, touched him and withdrew.