xcited tone. 'Show
me the Frate has such a time as we have! Whenever the friar comes, men
shuffle away to escape giving him their "quattrini." They know well
there's no such sturdy beggar as he who asks no alms, but shows you the
mouth of his long empty sack; but where we appear the crowds gather,
mothers snatch up their babies and hurry out to greet us; hard-worked
men cease their toil; children desert their games; all press round
eagerly at the first roll of Gaetana's drum, and of poor Chico's fife,
when he was with us,' added she, dropping her head, while a heavy tear
rolled down her swarthy cheek.

'_Maladizione a Chico!_' screamed out the old man, lifting up both his
clenched hands in passion.

'What was it he did?' asked Gerald of the old man.

'He fancied himself a patriot, boy, and he stabbed a spy of the police
at the St. Lucia one evening; and they have him now at the galleys, and
they 'll keep him there for life!

'Ah! if you saw him on the two poles,' cried the girl, 'only strapped
so, over his instep, and he could spring from here to the tree yonder;
and then he 'd unfasten one, and holding it on his forehead, balance
Babbo's basin on the top, all the while playing the tambourine! And who
could play it like him? It was a drum with cymbals in his hands.'

'Was he handsome, too?' asked Gerald, with a half-sly glance toward her;
but she only hung her head in silence.

'He handsome!' cried the old woman, catching at the words. 'Brutto!
brutto! he had a hare-lip, with a dog's jaw!'

'No, truly,' muttered Babbo; 'he was not handsome, though he could do
many a thing well-favoured ones couldn't attempt. He was a sore loss to
us,' said he, with a deep sigh.

'There wasn't a beast of the field nor a bird that flies he couldn't
imitate,' broke in Marietta; 'and with some wondrous cunning, too, he
could blend the sounds together, and you 'd hear the cattle lowing and
the rooks cawing all at the same time.'

'The owl was good; that was his best,' said Babbo.

'Oh, was it not fine!--the wild shriek of the owl, while the tide was
breaking on the shore, and the waves came in plash, plash, in the still
night.'

'May his toil be hard and his chains heavy!' exclaimed the hag; 'we have
had nothing but misery and distress since the day he was taken.'

'Poor fellow,' said Gerald, 'his lot is harder still.' The girl's dark
eyes turned fully upon him, with a look of grateful meaning, that well
repaid his compassiona