e old Mamertine Prison yonder. There's no money here,
boys--not a baiocco--nor even clothes, nothing but papers. Cursed be
those who ever taught the art of writing!--it serves for nothing but to
send brave men to the galleys.'

'I knew he was a courier,' said a small decrepit-looking man, with a
long stiletto stuck in his garter, 'and that he could have nothing of
any use to us.'

'Away with the trunk, then! throw it over the parapet into the ditch,
and make a jolly blaze with the papers. Ah, Signora Maria, time was when
a guidatore of the Campagna seldom came back at night without his purse
filled with sequins. Many a gay silk kerchief have I given a sweetheart,
ay, and many a gold trinket too, in those days. Cattle-driving would be
but a poor trade if the Appian Way didn't traverse the plain.' While he
spoke he continued to feed the flame with the papers, which he tore and
threw on the burning charcoal. 'Heap them on the fire, Fra, and don't
lose time spelling out their meaning. You get such a taste for learning
people's secrets at the confessional, you can't restrain the passion.'

'If I mistake not,' said Fra Luke, 'these papers are worth more than
double their weight in gold. They treat of very great matters, and are
in the writing of great people.'

'Per Bacco! they shall never bring me to the galleys, that I'll swear,'
cried the herdsman. 'Popes and princes would fret little about me when
they gained their ends. There, on with them, Fra. If I see you steal one
of them inside those loose robes of yours, by the blood of the martyrs,
I 'll pin it to your side with my poniard.'

'You mangy, starved hound of a goatherd!' cried Fra Luke, seizing the
massive iron tongs beside him; 'do you think it's one of yourselves
I am, or that I have the same cowardly heart that can be frightened
because you wear a knife in your sleeve? May I never see glory, if I
wouldn't clear the place of you all with these ould tongs, ay, and hunt
every mother's son of you down the alley.' The sudden spring forward as
he said this, seeming to denote an intention of action, so appalled his
hearers that they rushed simultaneously to the door, and, in all the
confusion of terror, fled into the street, the herdsman making use of
all his strength to cleave his way through the rest.

'Think of the Vendetta, Fra Luke! They never forgive!' tried the woman,
in a voice of anguish.

'Faix, it's more of the police I 'm thinking, Mrs. Mary,' said the