To this question there was no answer. Popetta had turned aside, and pretended not to hear.

"_Compagnos_!" cried the chief, "make inquiry, and find out who of those left behind has been absent while we were gone."

A man was pointed out by the accuser of Popetta. He was a greenhorn-- one of the recent recruits of the band, not yet admitted to the privileges of the "_giro_." The cross-questioning to which he was submitted soon produced its effect. Notwithstanding the promise of secrecy given to her who had selected him for a messenger, he confessed all. Unfortunately for Popetta, the fellow had been taught to read, and knew enough arithmetic to tell that he carried _two_ letters instead of _one_. He was able to say that one was for the father of the prisoner.

So far, Popetta had spoken the truth. It was the second letter that condemned her. That had been directed to Signor Torreani.

"Hear that!" cried several of the brigands, as soon as the name was announced, and without listening to the address. "The Signor Torreani!

Why, it is the _sindico_ of Val di Orno! No wonder we're being beset with soldiers! Every one knows that Torreani has never been our friend!"

"Besides," remarked the brigandess who had started the accusation, "why such friendship to a prisoner? Why has he had all the _confetti, rosalio_, the best things in the place--to say nothing of the company of the signorina herself? Depend upon it, _compagnos_, there has been treasonable conspiracy!"

Poor Popetta! her time was come. Her husband--if such he was--had found the opportunity long wanted--not to protect, but get rid of her. He could now do so with perfect impunity--even without blame. With the cunning of a tiger he had approached the dread climax; with the ferocity of a tiger he seized upon the opportunity.

"_Compagnos_!" appealed he, in a tone pretended to be sad; "I need not tell you how hard it is to hear these charges against one who is dear to me--my own wife. And it is harder to think they have been proved. But we are banded together by a law that cannot be broken--the law of self-preservation. That must be mutual among us. To infringe this law would lead to our dissolution--our ruin--and we have sworn to one another, that he, or she, who does aught contrary to it, shall suffer death! Death, though it be brother, sister, wife, or mistress. I, whom you have chosen for your chief, shall prove myself true. By this may you believe me."

While in the act of speaking the last words, the brigand sprang forward, until he stood by the side of his accused wife--Popetta. Her cry of terror was quickly succeeded by one of a different intonation. It was a shrill scream of agony, gradually subdued to the expiring accents of death, as the woman sank back upon the gra.s.s, with a poniard transfixed in her heart!

The scene that followed calls for no description. There was sign of neither weeping, nor woe, in that savage a.s.semblage. There may have been pity; but if there was, it did not declare itself. The murderous chieftain strode quietly away to his quarters, and there sought concealment. He was too hardened to have remorse. Some of his subordinates removed from the spot the ghastly evidence of his crime-- burying the body of the brigandess in a ravine close by. But not until they had stripped it of its glittering adornments--the spoils of many a fair maiden of the Campagna.

The prisoner was carried back to his cell, and there left to reflect on the tragedy just enacted--on the fate of poor Popetta. To his excited imagination it appeared but the foreshadowing of a still more fearful fate in store for himself.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.

A TOUGH AMPUTATION.

During three days succeeding the tragical event recorded, there was tranquillity in the bandit quarters--that gloomy quiet that succeeds some terrible occurrence, alike telling that it has occurred.

So far as Henry Harding saw, the chief kept himself indoors--as if doing decent penance for the brutal crime he had committed.

On the fourth day there transpired an event which roused the rendezvous to its usual activity. There was an excitement among the men, under which the late sanguinary scene was likely to be buried in oblivion.

A little before sunrise, the signals of the sentinel announced the approach of a messenger; and shortly afterwards a man came into the quarters. He was in peasant garb--the same who had carried the requisition on the landlord of the lodgings, and brought back the three-score scudi. This time he was the bearer of a dispatch of somewhat portentous appearance--a large envelope, enclosing a letter, with still another inside. It was addressed to the brigand chief, and to him delivered direct. The captive knew of the arrival of the messenger by much excited talking outside, which also proclaimed it to be an event of importance. He only learned that there was a letter, when the brigand chief burst angrily into his cell, holding the opened epistle in his hand.

"So!" cried the latter in fierce vociferation. "So, _Signor Inglese_, you've quarrelled with your father, have you? Well, that won't help you. It only shows, that for being such an undutiful son you deserve a little punishment. If you'd been a better boy, your worthy parent might have acted differently, and saved you your ears. As it is, you are about to lose them. Console yourself with the thought that they are not going out of the family. They shall be cropped off with the greatest care, and sent under cover to your father. Bring him out, comrades!

Let us have light for this delicate amputation."

Doggy d.i.c.k was ordered by the chief to go into the house for a knife; while two others retained the captive in their grasp, holding him as if to keep him steady for an operation. A third knocked his hat from his head, while a fourth pulled his long brown curls up over his crown, leaving his ears naked for the knife. All seemed to take delight in what they were doing, the women as well as the men--more especially she who had been instrumental in causing the death of Popetta. There was anger in the eyes of all; they were spited at not receiving the _riscatta_. The renegade had told an exaggerated story of the wealth of the captive's father, and they had founded high hopes upon it. They charged their disappointment to the prisoner, and were paying him for it by gibes and rough usage. They could see his ears cut off without a single sentiment of pity or remorse.

In a few seconds the knife-blade was gleaming against his cheek. It was raised to the left ear, which in another instant would have been severed from his head, when the captive, by a superhuman wrench, released his left hand, and instinctively applied it over the spot. It was a mere convulsive effort, caused by the horror of his situation. It would have been utterly unavailing, and he knew it. He had only made the movement under the impulse of a physical instinct. And yet it had the effect of preserving the threatened member.

Corvino, who stood near superintending the amputation, uttered a loud shout, at the same time commanding the amputator to desist. The cry was called forth at sight of the uplifted hand, or rather the little finger.

"_Diavolo_!" he exclaimed, springing forward and seizing the captive by the wrist. "You've done yourself a service, signore--you've saved your ears, at least for this time. Here's a present for your father much more appropriate. Perhaps it will point out to him the line of his duty, which he has shown himself so inclined to neglect. 'The hand to guard the head'--that's the motto among us. We shall permit you to adopt it to a proportionate extent, by allowing your little finger to be the protector of your ears. Ha! ha! ha!"

The brigands echoed the laughter of their chief, without exactly comprehending the witticism that had called it forth. They were soon enlightened as to the significance of the jest. The scarred finger was before their eyes. They saw it was an old cicatrice, sure to be recognised by any father who had taken the slightest interest in the physical condition of his son. This was the explanation of Corvino's interference to stay the cutting off of their captive's ears.

"We don't wish to be unnecessarily cruel," continued the chief in a tone of mock mercy; "no more do we wish to spoil such a pretty countenance as that which has made conquest of Popetta, and might have done the same for,"--here he leant close to his captive, and hissed spitefully into his ear--"_Lucetta_."

The cutting off of one ear, of both of them, would not have given Henry Harding so much pain as the sting of that cruel whisper. It thrilled him to his heart's core. Never in all his life had he felt, as at that moment, the despair, the absolute horror of helplessness. His tongue was still free, and he could not restrain it. He would speak, though he knew the words might cost him his life.

"Brute!" he vociferated, fixing his eye full upon the brigand chief; "if I had you upon fair ground, I'd soon change your sham exultation to an appeal for mercy. You dare not give me the chance. If you did, I would show these ruffians around you that you're not fit to be their captain.

You killed your wife to make way for another. Not you, madame," he continued, bowing derisively to the betrayer of Popetta, "but another, whom G.o.d preserve from ever appearing in your place. You may kill me-- cut me into pieces, if you will--but, depend upon it, my death will not go unavenged. England, my country, shall hear of it. Though you now fancy yourselves secure, you will be tracked into the very heart of your mountain fastnesses--hunted up, and shot down like dogs--like wolves, as you are--That's what will come to every one of you."

Ha was not allowed to proceed. Three-score angry voices breaking in upon his impetuous speech put an end to it.

"What care we for your country," cried they. "England, indeed!"

"d.a.m.n England!" shouted Doggy d.i.c.k. "_Inglaterra al inferno_!"

vociferated others. "France and Italia the same! The Pope, too, if you choose to throw him in. What can they do to us? We are beyond _their_ power; but you are in _ours_, signore. Let us prove it to him!"

A score of stilettos, suddenly and simultaneously drawn, were gleaming in the eyes of the captive as he listened to these words. He had half repented his hasty speech--believing it would be his last--when he saw the brigand chief interfering. He saw this with surprise: for Corvino had quailed before his challenge with a look of the most resentful malice. His surprise was of short duration. It ended on hearing what the chief had to say.

"Hold!" shouted he, in a voice of thunder. "Simpletons that you are, to care for the talk of a cur like this. Your own captive, too! Would you kill the goose that is to lay us golden eggs--a nest of them worth thirty thousand scudi? You're mad, _compagnos_. Leave me to manage the matter. Let us first get the eggs, which, by the grace of G.o.d and the help of the Madonna, we shall yet extract from the parental bird, and then--"

"Yes, yes!" cried several, interrupting this figurative speech of their leader; "let's get the eggs! Let's make the old bird lay them! Our comrade Ricardo here says he's rich as King Croesus."

"That do I," interposed Doggy d.i.c.k. "And I should know something about the eggs he's got, since once on a time I was his gamekeeper."

At this _jeu d'esprit_, which seemed rather dull to his Italian audience, though better understood by the captive, the renegade laughed immoderately.

"Enough," cried Corvino; "we're wasting our time, and perhaps," he added, with a ferocious leer, "the patience of our friend the artist.

Now, signore! we shall leave that handsome head unshorn of its auricular appendages. The little finger of your left hand is all we require at present. If it don't prove strong enough to extract the eggs we've been speaking of, we shall try the whole hand. If that too fail, we must give up the idea of having an omelette."

A yell of laughter hailed this sally.

"Then," continued the jocular ruffian, "we shan't have done with you.

To prove to the grand _Inglese_, your father, that we are not spiteful, and how far we Italians can outdo him in generosity, we shall send him a calf's head, with skin, ears, and everything attached to it."

Boars of laughter succeeded this fearful speech, and the stilettos were returned to their respective sheaths.

"Now," commanded the chief, once more calling the knife into requisition, "off with his finger. You needn't go beyond the second joint. Cut off by the knuckle, which I've heard is in great request among his countrymen. Don't spoil such a pretty hand. Leave him a stump to fill out the finger of his glove; when that is on, no one will be the wiser of what's wanting. You see, signore," concluded the wretch, in a taunting tone, "I don't wish to damage your personal appearance any more than is absolutely necessary for our purpose. I know you are proud of it; and considering what has happened with Popetta, I should be sorry at any mutilation that might debar you from a like success with Lucetta."

The last speech was delivered in a satanic whisper, again hissed into the ear of the captive. It elicited no reply; nor did the young Englishman make either remark, or resistance, when the cruel executioner caught hold of his hand, and severed from it the little finger by a clean cut of the knife-blade!

The amputation was the cue for terminating this strange scene. As soon as it was over, the captive was conducted back to his gloomy chamber, and left to the contemplation of a hand rendered unsymmetrical for life.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.

THE FAMILY SOLICITOR.

Though living but an hour, by rail, from London, General Harding rarely visited the metropolis more than once a year. Once, however, it was his custom to go--less to keep up his acquaintance with the great world, than with his old Indian a.s.sociates met at the "Oriental." He would stay at some hotel for a couple of weeks--spending most of his time in the streets or at the club--and then return to his retirement among the Chilterns, with _souvenirs_ sufficient to last him for the remainder of the year. During this annual sojourn in the city, he did not waste his time in mere gossiping with his ancient comrades in arms. He gave some portion of it to the management of affairs connected with his estate; which, of course, included a call upon his solicitors in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The time of his annual visit to the metropolis was in the "season," when all London, and a goodly number of its "country cousins"

are in town. The "House" is then sitting, concerts are the rage, and the "Row" affords its varied attractions. It was not any of these allurements, however, that called the old Indian officer from his country seat; but simply because he would then meet, men in London who, like himself, could not be encountered there at any other period of the year.

It was on one of the earliest days of the London season, when the dark-visaged messenger--who declared himself to have come from the dominions of the Pope--had made his appearance at Beechwood Park; and a few days later General Harding made his annual trip to London. This visit to the metropolis had nothing to do with the strange communication he had received through that very strange individual. It remained in his mind only from the painful impression it had made. He grieved that his son could be capable of practising such deception. Otherwise he thought very little about the matter, or, if so, it was not with a belief that there was any truth in the story about brigands. He believed it to be a very skilful concoction; and it was this that gave him pain--revealing on the part of his son a singular talent for chicanery.